Discord GIF Maker
Animated emoji that fit under 256 KB, or chat GIFs from any clip. Made on your device, nothing uploaded.
Your GIF
Fits a Discord emoji. Changed to get there:
- Quality: Small
- FPS 20 → 12
- Width 128 → 108
Photos go to Images to GIF first. Make the GIF there, then drop it here to fit it under 256 KB.
How to make a GIF for Discord
- Choose Emoji or Chat GIF above the drop zone. Emoji makes a 128 px square that has to come in under 256 KB. Chat GIF keeps your clip’s shape at 480 px.
- Drop a video or a GIF. Phone clips, screen recordings, and that reaction GIF that’s too heavy for an emoji slot all work.
- Drag the handles on the film strip to the moment you want. For an emoji, short wins: two or three seconds loops well and leaves the size budget for sharpness.
- Emoji mode crops a square from the middle. Slide Crop position until the face is in it.
- Press Make GIF. In Emoji mode the page keeps re-encoding until the file fits, then lists what it had to change. Download it and upload it to your server’s emoji.
Discord limits
These come from Discord’s help pages (emoji, file uploads, stickers), checked in October 2026.
| What | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Custom emoji (still or animated) | Under 256 KB | JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP. Animated emoji are tied to Nitro and Nitro Basic |
| File upload, free account | 20 MB | Raised to 20 MB in August 2026 |
| File upload, Nitro Basic | 50 MB | |
| File upload, Nitro | Up to 1 GB | |
| Sticker | 512 KB | APNG or PNG only, exactly 320 × 320. Not a GIF |
We aim for 255,000 bytes, a little under the line. Discord’s help page says 256 KB and its developer docs say 256 KiB (262,144 bytes), so a file that fits here fits either way. And 128 × 128 px? That’s the size people usually make emoji at, not a Discord rule.
How the 256 KB fitter works
Most Discord GIF guides tell you the limit and leave the rest to you. Export, upload, rejected, lower something, export again. We wrote that loop into the page. It steps settings down in a fixed order, cheapest loss first, and stops at the first file that fits:
- Quality goes from High to Balanced, then Small. That lets more of the tiny frame-to-frame flicker go unredrawn, which you mostly can’t see at emoji size.
- Colors drop from 255 to 128.
- Frame rate comes down a notch at a time: 20, 15, 12, 10, then 8 fps.
- Colors drop again, to 64.
- Width shrinks by about 15% per try, down to 64 px. It goes last because every step there is a visibly smaller picture.
It stops after 20 tries. If the GIF still doesn’t fit at 64 px and 8 fps, the page tells you how long the clip can be. That figure is an estimate from the size it reached, so trim a little under it.
Here’s what it did with real footage: a portrait phone clip of a toy robot on a dark gradient with subtitles, and a heavy GIF cut from a concert video.
| Input | Emoji GIF | What changed | Ended at |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 s phone clip, 1080 × 1920 | 202 KB | Quality: Balanced | 128 px, 20 fps |
| 10 s of the same clip | 213 KB | Quality: Small | 128 px, 20 fps |
| 10 s concert GIF, 480 × 853, 15.9 MB | 253 KB | Small, 64 colors, 8 fps | 128 px, 8 fps |
| 60 s of the phone clip | Didn’t fit: 359 KB | Everything, down to 64 px | Hint: cut to about 43 s |
Six seconds fit with almost nothing lost. A full minute was never going to: even at 64 px and 8 fps it came out 40% over. Keep emoji short.
GIFs in, GIFs out
Drop a GIF and it’s treated like a video. You can trim it, crop it square and pick the frame rate, and it’s re-sampled at that rate. That means a 30 fps GIF becomes a 20 fps emoji. Got a GIF with a see-through background? It stays see-through. Choose the edge color that matches where it’ll show: Dark for Discord’s dark theme, White for light.
FAQ
How do I make an animated emoji for Discord?
Pick Emoji above the drop zone, drop a video or GIF, trim it to the moment you want and press Make GIF. You get a 128 px square GIF under 256 KB. Then upload it in your server’s settings under Emoji. You need permission to add emoji to that server.
Why is my GIF too big for a Discord emoji?
A GIF’s size grows with its pixels, its frames, and how much changes from one frame to the next. A 480 px reaction GIF that runs 10 seconds can easily be several megabytes: our test GIF was 15.9 MB. Discord wants under 256 KB. Shrinking it to 128 px gets you most of the way. Fewer colors and fewer frames do the rest, in that order here. When even that isn’t enough, the loop has to get shorter.
Can I use a GIF as a Discord sticker?
No. Discord stickers have to be APNG or PNG, exactly 320 × 320 px and at most 512 KB (Discord’s sticker FAQ). A GIF is accepted as an emoji or as a file in chat, not as a sticker. We don’t make APNG stickers yet.
Do I need Nitro for animated emoji?
Discord ties animated emoji to Nitro and Nitro Basic, and the rules on slots and who can use what have shifted over the years. Discord’s emoji article has the current details. The file is the same either way: a GIF under 256 KB, which is what this page makes.
What’s the Discord file size limit?
20 MB per file on a free account, 50 MB with Nitro Basic and up to 1 GB with Nitro (Discord’s file upload article). Emoji have their own, much smaller limit: under 256 KB. Chat GIF mode here warns you when a GIF passes 20 MB.