How big is a 4K video file?
Roughly 60 MB to 8 GB per minute, depending entirely on the codec — a factor of over a hundred between a web export and camera RAW. Resolution alone tells you almost nothing about file size, which is why "how big is a 4K video" has no single answer and why people so often plan a delivery around the wrong number.
The numbers
Approximate, for 4K (3840×2160) at 24–30fps:
| Format | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| H.265 web export | 60–100 MB | 4–6 GB |
| H.264 web export | 100–200 MB | 6–12 GB |
| Phone video (H.265) | ~350 MB | ~21 GB |
| Camera H.264/H.265, high bitrate | 300–600 MB | 18–36 GB |
| ProRes 422 LT | ~2 GB | ~120 GB |
| ProRes 422 | ~3 GB | ~180 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ | ~5 GB | ~300 GB |
| ProRes 4444 | ~7 GB | ~420 GB |
| Camera RAW | 8 GB and up | 480 GB and up |
Treat these as the right order of magnitude rather than exact. Bitrates vary by camera, by settings, and — for anything variable-bitrate — by what is actually in the frame.
Why the same footage varies so much
Bitrate is the file size. Size is roughly bitrate times duration. Everything else is a lever on bitrate.
Codecs trade size against editability. H.264 and H.265 are delivery codecs: they compress heavily by describing how frames differ from each other, which is efficient to store and expensive to scrub through. ProRes and RAW are production formats: much larger, but each frame stands alone, which is what makes editing responsive and grading possible.
H.265 is roughly twice as efficient as H.264 for the same apparent quality. That is why the top two rows differ by a factor of two.
Variable bitrate means content matters. A static interview compresses far better than handheld footage of leaves in wind. Two ten-minute clips from the same camera can differ by 40%.
Frame rate scales it. 60fps needs meaningfully more than 24fps. Slow-motion at 120fps more again.
Working out your own number
Do not estimate. Take a one-minute clip in the format you actually shoot, check its size, and multiply. That single measurement is more reliable than any table including this one, because it accounts for your camera, your settings and your kind of footage.
If you only know the bitrate, the arithmetic is: megabits per second ÷ 8 × 60 = megabytes per minute. So 100 Mbps is 750 MB a minute, or about 45 GB an hour.
~300 GB
What this means for sending it
The bracket you are in decides the method entirely:
Under 2 GB — a ten-minute web export. Any transfer service, any free tier.
2 to 50 GB — a ten-minute ProRes 422 HQ cut is around 50 GB. This is where free tiers diverge: SwissTransfer takes 50 GB free with no account (checked 1 August 2026), Yungle — which I build — takes 10 GB per transfer with no limit on how many, and WeTransfer's free tier is 3 GB across a rolling 30 days (31 July 2026). The comparison has the full picture.
Above 50 GB — an hour of anything in ProRes. The transfer ceiling stops being the constraint and resumable uploads become the only property that matters, because something will interrupt a multi-hour upload. Sending 4K and RAW properly.
Above a terabyte — an hour of camera RAW, or a full project archive. Post an encrypted drive. On a typical connection it is genuinely faster.
The practical consequence
The reason this matters is that people plan deliveries around the wrong figure. "It's a ten-minute video" could mean 700 MB or 50 GB, and those need completely different approaches.
Check the actual file before you decide how to send it. And if the number is inconvenient, the answer is usually to send a compressed review copy first and the master once — not to re-encode the deliverable to fit under a limit. Compression is a decision about the preview.
Storage, not just sending
The same numbers decide your archive. An hour of ProRes 422 HQ is around 300 GB, so a year of regular work runs into many terabytes.
That is worth thinking about deliberately, because storage is where the ongoing cost of video work actually sits — and where most of its environmental footprint sits too, since keeping a file for a year costs far more energy than sending it once. Deleting the footage you will never use again is the cheapest thing on both counts.