GIF size limits for Discord, Slack, X, GitHub and email (2026)

Discord takes a GIF up to 20 MB on a free account, and X up to 15 MB from the web but only 5 MB from the phone app. Most other places are roomier: Slack messages up to 1 GB, Gmail 25 MB, GitHub 10 MB. The tight limits are the small things: a Discord emoji under 256 KB, a Slack emoji under 128 KB, and a Discord profile banner under 10 MB that needs Nitro.

Every number below comes from the platform's own help pages, checked on 23 September 2026. Limits change (Discord doubled its free cap in August 2026), so each row links to where it came from.

Every limit in one table

“Not stated” means the platform's own page doesn't give a number. We left those blank rather than copy a figure from a third-party blog.

Will a 480 px GIF fit?

Here's a practical check. Gifsy's GIF maker always exports 480 × 480, and the example files on its effect pages run from 0.3 MB to 3.5 MB. Set against the limits above:

So a full-size GIF is fine almost everywhere you'd post one, and never fine as an emoji. Emoji want something around 128 px and a few dozen kilobytes. That's a different file, and the Gifsy GIF maker can't make it: it has no size or quality setting.

On Discord specifically, a 480 × 480 square GIF works as a Nitro profile picture and is well over the 128×128 minimum for a server icon. It's the wrong shape for banners: a profile banner needs at least 680×240 and a server banner wants 960×540, so a square GIF gets cropped hard or rejected.

Discord: 20 MB free, 256 KB for an emoji

Discord's free upload cap was 10 MB until August 2026, when it doubled to 20 MB. The same change measures file size before compression on both desktop and mobile, so an Android phone can now hit the limit with a file it used to squeeze through. Nitro Basic is 50 MB and Nitro up to 500 MB. Server boosts raise the cap for everyone in that server: 50 MB at Level 2 and 100 MB at Level 3. Discord also says it's testing other limits with some accounts. (Figures from Discord's help centre, read on 25 September 2026.)

GIF profile picture

Only Nitro subscribers can use a GIF as their avatar; everyone else gets a still PNG. Discord's Custom Profiles page lists PNG and GIF as the avatar types but doesn't give a file-size limit for the main avatar. Per-server avatars, also Nitro, take JPG, PNG or GIF up to 8 MB. Avatars are shown as a circle, so keep the subject in the middle of a square GIF.

Profile banner

Also Nitro only: a PNG, JPG or animated GIF under 10 MB, at least 680×240 pixels. Discord lets you crop after uploading, which is where a square GIF loses most of its height.

Server icon and server banner

A server icon has to be at least 128×128. It can be an animated GIF once the server reaches Boost Level 1 (2 boosts), and on desktop it animates when you hover over it. Server banners arrive at Level 2 as a still image and at Level 3 animated; Discord recommends 960×540 in 16:9 for both. Neither page gives a file-size cap, so we haven't invented one.

Emoji and stickers

A custom emoji can be a GIF under 256 KB and up to 128×128 px; Discord shows it at 32×32. Stickers are exactly 320×320 and up to 512 KB, and animated ones have to be APNG, so a GIF needs converting before it can be a sticker.

X (Twitter): 15 MB on the web, 5 MB on a phone

X's help centre allows animated GIFs up to 15 MB from the web and 5 MB from the mobile app. If a GIF uploads on your laptop and fails on your phone, that's why. The developer docs add limits that matter for tools posting through the API: at most 1280×1080, 350 frames, and 300 million pixels counted as width × height × frames. A 480 × 480 GIF with 58 frames uses about 13 million.

Slack: 1 GB in a message, 128 KB for an emoji

Posting a GIF in a channel is the easy case. Slack accepts files up to 1 GB and shows the preview inline as long as the image is under 25,000 pixels on its longest side. You will not hit that with a GIF.

Custom emoji are the opposite. Slack's help page asks for square images under 128 KB and says “GIFs can include up to 50 frames.” A Gifsy effect GIF has 30 frames (58 with boomerang on), but at 480 px it's still far over 128 KB. Make the emoji from a tiny, square source instead, or shrink an existing GIF with an optimizer that can drop frames.

GitHub: 10 MB per GIF

GitHub Docs list .gif among the formats you can drop into an issue, pull request or comment, with “10MB for images and gifs” and 25 MB for other files. Every example in the table above fits, which makes a 480 px GIF a reasonable size for showing a UI change in a PR.

Email: Gmail's 25 MB and Outlook's first frame

Gmail's attachment limit is 25 MB for personal accounts. Go over it and Gmail swaps the attachment for a Google Drive link, which is fine for a file but useless for a GIF you wanted people to see playing in the message.

Outlook is the bigger risk, and it isn't about size. Microsoft's support page says: “If only the first frame of the animation appears, you have animations, or animated GIFs, disabled.” That setting lives on the reader's computer, not yours. Put the headline, the offer or the joke in frame one, and treat the motion as a bonus.

Telegram and Notion

Telegram doesn't keep your GIF. Its API documentation says an uploaded GIF “will be automatically converted to an MPEG4 file by the server”, a silent h264 video that loops in the chat like a GIF would. It doesn't publish a separate GIF size limit on that page. If you're making stickers rather than GIFs, the rules are different; see Telegram sticker size.

Notion's Free plan caps every upload at 5 MB, and its help page lists GIF as a supported file type. The page doesn't say whether animation survives, so check yours after uploading.

How to get a GIF under the limit

What actually moves the file size, in the order worth trying. Making the GIF from a video? The video to GIF maker shows an estimated size before it encodes, so you can trim or shrink it first.

1. Leave boomerang off. It's off by default in Gifsy: a loop is 30 frames, and boomerang plays them back again for 58. In our measurements that made the file 1.9 times bigger, for motion that mostly looks the same.
2. Pick a simpler photo. Fine detail is expensive. The golden retriever on Zoom came out at 3.5 MB; a flat-coloured cartoon on Bounce came out at 1.0 MB. Those are different photos and effects, so read it as a pattern, not a controlled test.
3. Use fewer frames on purpose. A slideshow GIF stores one frame per photo; four photos made a 0.3 MB file. A boomerang from a burst of eight shots was 1.8 MB.
4. Don't bother with the speed slider. It changes how long each frame is shown, not how many there are, so the file stays the same size.
5. Compress it elsewhere. Gifsy has no resize or compression setting. ezgif's GIF optimizer says its lossy mode cuts animated GIFs by 30–50% “at the cost of some dithering and noise”, and it can drop frames or colours. Note that it works by uploading the file, which it deletes after an hour.

Choosing an effect in the first place? The guide to animating a photo into a GIF covers which photos suit which motion, and the free GIF maker comparison lists tools with larger outputs and optimizers built in.

FAQ

Sources and update log

All checked on 23 September 2026: Slack files, Slack emoji, GitHub Docs, Gmail Help, Microsoft Support, X API docs, Telegram API docs, Notion Help, ezgif.

Discord's help pages block automated reading, but the same articles are published through the help centre's public API, which is where every Discord number here comes from, read on 25 September 2026: file attachments, emoji, stickers, custom profiles, per-server profiles, server boosting, server banners, creating a server, plus Discord's announcement of the 20 MB change. X's help centre still blocks automated reading; its numbers come from its own wording as it appears in search results for that page.

Not covered: WhatsApp, whose help pages we couldn't read, and iMessage, where Apple doesn't publish a GIF limit. We'd rather leave a row out than fill it from a blog.

Update log. 23 September 2026: first published. 25 September 2026: Discord and X moved to the top; added Discord profile picture, profile banner, server icon, server banner and boosted-server upload limits from Discord's help centre.