Your file is too big for WhatsApp. Here's how to share it without losing quality.
WhatsApp's 2 GB document cap, plus the photo and video compression trap · Updated May 2026
WhatsApp's 2 GB cap only applies cleanly to documents. Photos and videos sent as media are compressed hard. Send the original through sto.care, paste the link in WhatsApp.
- 5 GB per file, well above WhatsApp's 2 GB document cap
- Originals, not compressed copies (we don't re-encode anything)
- Works on every WhatsApp client: just paste the link
- No signup, free, 7-day expiry
The error message says "File is too large". The actual situation is more interesting than that. WhatsApp accepts a 2 GB document just fine, but the moment you pick a photo or video through the gallery picker, you're running it through a compression pipeline that doesn't care what the original looked like. Your 24-megapixel portrait lands as a 150 KB JPEG; your 4K vacation clip lands as a transcoded 720p file; your RAW photos won't go through at all. The file isn't too big. It's the wrong shape for the channel.
The Real LimitsWhat WhatsApp actually does to your files
WhatsApp raised its cap from 100 MB to 2 GB in May 2022. The official announcement on Meta's WhatsApp blog put it plainly: "you can now send files within WhatsApp up to 2 GB in size at a time, protected by end-to-end encryption." That number is real and it applies to documents on iOS, Android, WhatsApp Web, and WhatsApp Desktop.
The catch is the word "document". WhatsApp has two separate attachment paths and they behave differently. Pick the paperclip and choose Document, and the bytes go up untouched within the 2 GB ceiling. Pick the gallery or camera (the Photo & Video flow) and the file is reclassified as media, which triggers a resize-and-re-encode pass before anything leaves your phone. Photos get scaled to roughly 1600 pixels on the long edge and squeezed into a low-quality JPEG, usually somewhere between 70 KB and 200 KB regardless of what went in. Videos are transcoded to a lower bitrate, often dropping from 4K to 720p along the way. Audio is re-encoded as Opus.
HD mode, rolled out in late 2023, lifts the compression a step but doesn't remove it. There's still a resize, still a re-encode, still a quality loss compared to the original. If what you need is the exact file your camera produced, the only path inside WhatsApp itself is the Document attachment, and that's capped at 2 GB.
The WorkaroundHow to send a file bigger than 2 GB through WhatsApp
You don't. The trick is that you don't need to. The file goes through sto.care, only the link goes through WhatsApp. The link is plain text, so it lands in the chat instantly no matter how big the file is on the other end.
Three steps. Open sto.care in any browser and drop the file on the upload zone. Wait for the upload to finish (about 7 minutes for a 5 GB file on a 100 Mbps line, closer to 45 seconds on gigabit fibre). Copy the share link, paste it into the WhatsApp chat, send. The recipient taps the link, the file streams from S3 to their browser, they save it. No app install on either end, no "create an account to download" interstitial, no compression in either direction.
The link works for 7 days, after which the file is purged out of the bucket by an S3 lifecycle rule and the URL 404s. If you want to kill it sooner (wrong file, wrong recipient, just changed your mind), the confirmation email we send the sender contains a one-click revoke link that does the same thing on demand.
Trade-OffsWhat WhatsApp does that sto.care doesn't
We aren't pretending sto.care is a WhatsApp replacement. WhatsApp wins on the things WhatsApp is built for: an end-to-end encrypted thread the recipient already has open, push notifications that actually arrive, group chats with reactions and replies stitched into the same conversation, voice notes, read receipts. None of that exists on a download page, and it shouldn't.
The places sto.care is the right tool are narrower. Files past the 2 GB document cap. Photos and videos where the source actually matters (a wedding shoot, a portfolio export, a print file, a RAW from a mirrorless body). Files in formats WhatsApp refuses or converts (RAW, ProRes, lossless audio, large PSDs). Anything you'd rather not have living in the recipient's chat backup forever once they've downloaded it. For those, the link is cleaner than fighting the compression.
Side By SideThe four channels, on one row
The pattern: WhatsApp's 2 GB number is honest only for the document path. The media path is where most people end up, because tapping the gallery is the obvious gesture, and that path comes with a compression pipeline you can't turn off even with HD mode toggled on. sto.care exists for the cases where neither answer works: the file is past 2 GB, or you need the original bytes and don't want to coach the sender into picking Document instead of Photo & Video.
FAQCommon questions
What's WhatsApp's actual file size limit?
2 GB per file on the consumer apps (iOS, Android, WhatsApp Web, WhatsApp Desktop). Meta announced the bump from 100 MB to 2 GB in May 2022. The cap is the same on the WhatsApp Business app on your phone. The WhatsApp Business Cloud API used by chatbots is much tighter (100 MB documents, 16 MB video, 5 MB images), but that only matters if you're integrating through the API.
Why does WhatsApp shrink my photos and videos?
Bandwidth. WhatsApp was built for slow mobile networks in countries where every megabyte costs money, so when you attach a photo or video as media (the default gallery picker), it gets resized to roughly 1600 pixels on the long edge, re-encoded as a low-quality JPEG, and stripped of metadata. Videos are transcoded down to a lower bitrate. The 2 GB number doesn't really apply to photos sent this way because they almost never exceed 200 KB after compression.
Can I send a RAW file through WhatsApp?
Not as media. WhatsApp will refuse the format or convert it. The workaround is to attach it as a Document (paperclip icon, then Document, not Photo & Video), which preserves the bytes up to the 2 GB cap. For RAW files past 2 GB or batches of them, upload through sto.care and paste the download link into the chat instead.
Will the recipient need to install anything?
No. The link goes through WhatsApp as plain text. The recipient taps it, the file streams from S3 in their browser, and they save it like any other download. No sto.care account, no app, no signup prompt on the download page.
How long does the link work?
7 days from upload, then the file is purged out of S3 by an automated lifecycle rule and the link 404s. The confirmation email we send the sender contains a one-click revoke link if you want to kill the share sooner. No paid tier, no extension option, no soft-delete tier where the file lingers.
Does sto.care compress my file the way WhatsApp does?
No. We don't re-encode photos, transcode video, or touch the bytes at all. The file your camera produced is the file the recipient downloads, hash for hash. We hold the data in AWS S3 (eu-west-1, Ireland) with TLS in transit and AES-256 server-side encryption at rest. That's not end-to-end (we hold the keys), but it doesn't change a pixel of your photo.
Send the original. Paste the link. Skip the compression.
UPLOAD A FILE →Want the longer version of how WhatsApp's compression actually works? Read our full breakdown of the WhatsApp file size limit. Comparing options for the source file itself? See sto.care vs Google Drive for the persistent-storage trade-off, or send large files free for the full feature page.