tinyvid.dev

Convert MP4 to GIF

Turn a slice of your MP4 into an animated GIF for the places that still won't play video: GitHub READMEs and pull requests, Slack and Teams previews, email. Pick a start and a length — we cut it, build a 256-colour palette and hand you the <img> tag. Free up to 200 MB, no sign-up.

tinyvid · converter

Drop your video here

or browse files
MP4 · MOV · AVI · MKV · WebM · GIF|Free up to 200 MB
01About the conversion

When a GIF is the right answer — and when it isn't

A GIF is not a video format. It stores whole frames, each capped at 256 colours, squeezed only by LZW — the compression scheme from 1987. That is why ten seconds of footage that fits in 300 KB of H.264 turns into several megabytes of GIF. There is no way around that arithmetic; there are only three dials that keep it in check — the trim, the width and the frame rate.

What a GIF has going for it is that it shows up anywhere an image shows up. A GitHub README renders it inline, Slack and Teams animate it in the message list, and a Jira ticket, a Notion page or an HTML email will display it exactly where a <video> tag is stripped out or quietly ignored. That is the whole case for the format, and it is a good one.

On an actual web page, though, use the MP4: the same clip is roughly ten times lighter, it streams instead of blocking, and it can be paused. If the clip is headed for a website, switch the preset back to Hero background and that is precisely what you get.

02Step by step

How to convert an MP4 to a GIF

  1. Drop your .mp4 on the box above or browse for it — up to 200 MB is free and needs no account.
  2. Pick the GIF preset. The advanced panel switches to the three dials that matter here: width, frame rate and trim.
  3. Set Start and Length. Length defaults to 10 seconds and can't go past 30 — a GIF grows in direct proportion to the number of frames.
  4. Choose a width (320, 480 or 640 px) and a frame rate (10, 12 or 15 fps). The estimate under the chips updates as you go, so you see the weight before you convert.
  5. Press Convert and copy the <img> snippet: width, height and loading="lazy" are already in it, you only need to write the alt text.
03FAQ
01How big will my GIF be?
Roughly frames × width × height × 0.4 bytes. At the defaults — 480 px, 12 fps and 10 seconds — that is about 6 MB; 320 px at 10 fps drops to around 2 MB, while 640 px at 15 fps for 10 seconds lands near 14 MB. Flat graphics and screen recordings compress far better than live footage. The tool shows a live estimate under the width and frame-rate chips.
02Will it fit GitHub, Discord or an email?
GitHub caps images and GIFs at 10 MB in issues, pull requests and READMEs — 480 px at 12 fps for 10 seconds fits with room to spare. Discord raised its free upload limit to 20 MB in August 2026 (Nitro is far higher), but check the current number before you rely on it. For email, aim well under 1 MB: corporate gateways are often stricter than the sender's own service.
03Why is 30 seconds the maximum?
Because a GIF has no motion compression: every extra second is another dozen full frames. Thirty seconds at 640 px and 15 fps is already about 40 MB, past any limit worth aiming for. If you need something longer, the format you actually want is MP4.
04Does the GIF keep the audio?
No — the GIF format has no audio track at all. If the sound matters, convert to MP4 instead; from the result that takes one click.
05Why do the colours look flatter than the video?
A GIF frame holds at most 256 colours. We build the palette from your own footage rather than using a fixed one, and dither it so gradients don't break into bands, but a 16-million-colour source always loses something. Sharp graphics and interface recordings survive it best.
06Is it free, and what happens to my file?
Free up to 200 MB, no account and no watermark. The file is uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and both the source and the result are deleted automatically within 24 hours.