How much storage does 4K video take on iPhone?

The short answer

4K video at 60 fps takes about 400 MB per minute on iPhone. At 30 fps, 4K takes about 170 MB per minute in HEVC, and 1080p at 30 fps takes about 60 MB per minute, also in HEVC. Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro tech specifications list which resolutions, frame rates and codecs the phone records, but the Apple pages we could read do not publish a file size per minute. The figures below come from named, dated third-party measurements, and each one says where it comes from.

MB per minute for each iPhone format

The most detailed figures we could trace come from iMore’s 4K and 1080p guide, which measured iPhone 8 under iOS 11 and was last updated on 24 September 2017. It gives both codecs for each format:

Recording format	HEVC (High Efficiency), MB per minute	H.264 (Most Compatible), MB per minute
1080p, 30 fps	60	130
1080p, 60 fps	90	175
4K, 24 fps	135	270
4K, 30 fps	170	350
4K, 60 fps	400, codec not stated	not stated

The 4K at 60 fps figure of about 400 MB per minute comes from iMore, which gives it without naming a codec, and from Ubergizmo, which gives the same number. Ubergizmo, a 2019 article, says the list is “according to Apple” and refers to Apple’s Settings page. We could not find Apple publishing that list, so we treat the 400 MB figure as third-party.

Other formats that appear in the same sources:

Format	MB per minute	Source
720p, 30 fps	40 (codec not stated)	Ubergizmo, 2019
1080p, 120 fps slow motion, HEVC	170	iMore
1080p, 240 fps slow motion, HEVC	480	iMore
Cinematic mode	not published	Apple lists it as up to 4K HDR at 30 fps
ProRes	not published per minute	Apple says up to 30 times HEVC

For ProRes, Apple’s ProRes page says “ProRes files are up to 30 times larger than HEVC files.” A storage vendor, SanDisk, lists 4K at 30 fps in ProRes 422 HQ at about 6 GB per minute, and about 12 GB per minute at 4K 60 fps. Those numbers are from a vendor and we could not match them to Apple’s own figures, so treat ProRes as several gigabytes per minute and check it on your own phone.

The HEVC and H.264 pairs in the iMore table differ by about half. At 4K 30 fps, 350 divided by 170 is about 2.1, and at 1080p 30 fps, 130 divided by 60 is about 2.2. That is the size each setting produces, not a measure of equal quality. For the quality comparison, see Wikipedia’s summary of HEVC, which says HEVC can achieve “from 25% to 50% better data compression at the same level of video quality” than AVC (the standard behind H.264).

Why 4K is so large

A 4K frame has 3840 × 2160 pixels, which is 8,294,400 pixels. A 1080p frame has 1920 × 1080, or 2,073,600 pixels. 4K has four times the pixels per frame. Shooting at 60 fps instead of 30 doubles the frames per second, so 4K at 60 fps carries eight times as many pixels per second as 1080p at 30 fps.

The file does not grow eight times, because the encoder spends fewer bits per pixel at higher resolution. Using the iMore and Ubergizmo figures, 400 MB per minute is about 53 megabits per second, spread over about 497 million pixels per second. That works out to about 0.11 bits per pixel. 1080p at 30 fps in HEVC, at 60 MB per minute, is 8 megabits per second over about 62 million pixels per second, or about 0.13 bits per pixel. The gap between them is 400 divided by 60, or about 6.7 times.

Newer iPhones record more than the iPhone 8 did. Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro page lists 4K Dolby Vision at 100 and 120 fps on the main camera, and the iPhone 14 Pro page lists 4K Dolby Vision at up to 60 fps. The per-minute sizes above do not cover those modes. If you need the exact figure for your phone, record one minute in the format you use and check the file size.

What fits in 128 GB and 256 GB

Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro page lists storage in 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB sizes, with the footnote “Available space is less and varies due to many factors.” The numbers below are therefore the ceiling: they assume every byte of the phone is free for video.

This article counts 1 GB as 1,000 MB to keep the arithmetic simple. The rule is minutes equal the storage in MB divided by the MB per minute.

Recording	MB per minute	Minutes in 128 GB	Minutes in 256 GB
1080p, 30 fps, HEVC	60	2,133	4,267
1080p, 60 fps, HEVC	90	1,422	2,844
4K, 30 fps, HEVC	170	753	1,506
4K, 60 fps	400	320	640
Our 4K test clip, as recorded	436	294	587
Same clip, compressed to 1080p HEVC	65	1,969	3,938

Worked example: 128,000 MB divided by 400 MB per minute is 320 minutes, or 5 hours 20 minutes of 4K 60 fps video. For 256 GB, 256,000 divided by 400 is 640 minutes, or 10 hours 40 minutes.

Free space is what matters, and it is always less than the total. Suppose Settings shows 100 GB free. At 400 MB per minute, 100,000 divided by 400 is 250 minutes of 4K 60 fps. The same 100 GB holds 1,538 minutes of the compressed 1080p clip, because 100,000 divided by 65 is about 1,538.

What compressing changes

Take one real example: a 5-minute 4K Dolby Vision video of 2.18 GB. Emptie compressed it as 1080p HEVC at 8 megabits per second, and the result was 323 MB, with nothing visibly lost on the phone. The arithmetic:

• Original: 2,180 MB divided by 5 minutes is 436 MB per minute.
• Compressed: 323 MB divided by 5 minutes is about 65 MB per minute.
• Saving: (2,180 minus 323) divided by 2,180 is 85%. The file is about 6.7 times smaller.
• Check on the bitrate: 8 megabits per second for 60 seconds is 480 megabits, and dividing by 8 bits per byte gives 60 MB per minute of video. Our 65 MB includes the sound track and file overhead. We did not measure how the difference splits between them.

One clip is not a benchmark. The saving depends on the scene, and a video that is already small will save less. Emptie leaves a video alone when the Compressed Copy would save less than about 20%.

Lowering the frame rate barely helps

We also tested 60 fps against 30 fps at the same bitrate. The 30 fps file came out at 325 MB, against 323 MB for the 60 fps version, and it looked less smooth. Dropping the frame rate is not how you save space. The saving comes from resolution and bitrate, which is why Emptie’s Presets keep the original frame rate, and frame rate is a separate choice under Advanced Settings.

Compatibility after compressing

Compressed Copies are HEVC, which is the format iPhone records in High Efficiency mode. Apple’s HEIF and HEVC page says that resolutions of 1080p or lower and frame rates of 60 fps or lower “are more broadly compatible with older devices.” When a video is shared to a device that cannot play HEVC, iOS can convert it to H.264 on the way out, so a 1080p HEVC copy is the safer choice for sending to older devices.

Where this leaves your storage

If your library is mostly 4K at 60 fps, the 400 MB per minute figure tells you how much room the library is using. A few hours of 4K video can take most of a 128 GB phone. Compressing the largest videos gives back the most space, because those are the ones with the biggest per-minute figures.

Emptie does this on the phone. It compresses the videos you select, keeps the Original until you confirm the Compressed Copy in Review, and carries the date, location, Favorite, Hidden and album membership across. If you want the steps for compressing one video by hand first, see how to compress video on iPhone. If the space did not come back after you deleted videos, see why iPhone storage is not freed after deleting videos. For the quality question, see whether compressing video loses quality.

Frequently asked questions

How much storage does one minute of 4K video take on iPhone?

About 170 MB per minute at 4K 30 fps in HEVC, and about 400 MB per minute at 4K 60 fps. These are third-party measurements from iPhone 8 under iOS 11. The Apple pages we could read do not publish a per-minute size.

How many hours of 4K video fit on a 128 GB iPhone?

About 12.5 hours at 4K 30 fps in HEVC, since 128,000 MB divided by 170 MB per minute is 753 minutes. At 4K 60 fps the figure is about 5 hours 20 minutes. Free space is less than the advertised capacity, so the real number is lower.

Does Apple publish how much storage each video format uses?

Not on the Apple pages we could read. Apple lists the resolutions, frame rates and codecs each iPhone records and says ProRes files are up to 30 times larger than HEVC files. It does not give a file size per minute for each format.

Does HEVC take less space than H.264 on iPhone?

Yes. In the third-party figures, HEVC is about half the size of H.264 at the same resolution and frame rate, for example 170 MB versus 350 MB per minute at 4K 30 fps. Those are the sizes each setting produces, not equal-quality comparisons.