Video Bitrate Calculator
Estimate the bitrate a video needs at any resolution, frame rate and quality level, and see what that means in storage.
Convert with this tool
Files stay on your device. There is no upload, no queue and no watermark, so a conversion works even with the network switched off after the page has loaded.
Supported formats & processing
| Input | Numbers you type — nothing is calculated until you change a value |
|---|---|
| Output | A live result table, recalculated on every keystroke |
| Processing | Plain arithmetic in this tab — instantaneous and offline |
About this tool
Video bitrate is not a single number you can look up — it depends on how many pixels are changing per second and how much compression the encoder is allowed to apply. The practical model is bits per pixel per frame, a figure that captures both the resolution and the frame rate in one value.
This calculator uses that model. A bits-per-pixel value of 0.1 corresponds to typical streaming quality, 0.15 to good H.264, and 0.4 to a near-lossless intermediate. Multiply it by the pixel count, the frame rate and the duration and you get a realistic bitrate and storage estimate — and the last row shows how much that is compressed relative to raw RGB video.
Features
- Bits-per-pixel model used by real encoders
- Five quality levels from heavy compression to near-lossless
- Audio bitrate added into the total
- Data rate per minute and per ten minutes
- How much footage one gigabyte holds
- Compression ratio compared with raw RGB video
Frequently asked questions
What bitrate do I need for 1080p?
At 30 fps with 0.1 bits per pixel you get about 6.2 Mbps, which is typical streaming quality. For a high-quality H.264 delivery copy, 0.15 bits per pixel gives roughly 9.3 Mbps.
Is a higher bitrate always better?
Up to the point where the encoder stops finding new detail to preserve, yes. Beyond that you are storing noise. Constant quality modes such as CRF adapt the bitrate automatically, which is why they usually beat fixed-bitrate encoding.
How do I hit a target file size?
Calculate the total bits available, divide by the duration in seconds, and that is your bitrate. The video file size calculator does the reverse calculation and will tell you the bitrate needed to fit a limit.
Why is 4K not four times the bitrate of 1080p?
It is four times the pixels, and encoders handle larger frames more efficiently because there is more spatial redundancy to exploit. In practice 4K needs roughly two to three times the bitrate of 1080p for the same perceived quality.