MP4 to 3GP Converter
Older feature phones, cheap kids' media players and MMS messages still expect 3GP: a small, low-resolution clip in the mobile container the phone industry standardized in the early 2000s. This page starts at 240p, 15 fps and 96 kbps AAC so the file plays on modest hardware.
Video Converter
or drop MP4, MOV, MKV … files here ·
Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes
Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.
Lower is better quality and a bigger file. 18 looks identical to the source, 23 is the default, 28 and above shows visible softening.
Frames per second. Keep the source rate unless a platform asks for a specific one; 15–20 fps is plenty for GIFs.
Only used for PowerPoint files and single still images: how long each slide or picture stays on screen.
Auto uses AAC for MP4/MOV and Opus for WebM. Copy keeps the original sound untouched when the new format supports it.
192 kbps is transparent for music; 128 kbps is enough for speech.
Width of the animation in pixels; height follows the aspect ratio. 480 px suits chats, 720 px or more gives a high-quality GIF but a much larger file.
GIF holds at most 256 colors. Fewer colors make a smaller file but cause banding on gradients and skin tones.
Mixes palette colors in a fine pattern to hide banding. Sierra gives the smoothest result; none gives the smallest file.
Whether the animation repeats endlessly or plays one time and stops.
Optional. Seconds (e.g. 75) or minutes:seconds (1:15). Leave empty to start at the beginning.
Optional. Same format as the start time. Leave empty to keep everything up to the end.
The converted file will be at or just under this size.
How to use this tool
- 1
Upload the MP4
Add up to 20 MP4 files, 95 MB each. Clips recorded on a current phone are fine; the converter scales them down.
- 2
Match the target device
Keep Resolution at 240p for a feature phone, or raise it to 360p for a media player with a larger screen. Tick Limit file size if the clip goes out by MMS.
- 3
Convert to 3GP
Press Convert to 3GP, then copy the file to the phone's memory card or send it from your messaging app.
How do I convert MP4 to 3GP?
Upload the MP4 and press Convert to 3GP. The defaults on this page scale the video to 240p at 15 fps with 96 kbps AAC sound, settings that old phones and pocket players handle without stuttering.
Who still needs an MP4 to 3GP converter
A current phone records 1080p or 4K at 30 or 60 frames per second, often as HEVC. A Nokia or Samsung feature phone from 2008 has a screen around 240 × 320 px and a decoder built for a fraction of that work. Copy a modern MP4 to it and you get an "unsupported format" message, a black screen, or video that freezes while the sound continues.
3GP fixes that by lowering everything at once: frame size, frame rate and bitrate. The same applies to the budget video players sold for children, older in-car screens and some MMS gateways, all of which were built around the 3GPP mobile profile.
Choosing a 3GP resolution for an old phone
- 240p
Feature phones, MMS, 2-inch screens
- 360p
Pocket media players, later Symbian phones
- 480p
Early smartphones; files grow fast
- 720p
Rarely decoded by 3GP-era hardware
MP4
MPEG-4 video
MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14) is a multimedia container standardised by ISO/MPEG and based on Apple's QuickTime format. It usually holds H.264 or HEVC video with AAC audio, and can also carry subtitles, chapters and metadata. It is the most compatible video format in the world, playing on phones, browsers, TVs, game consoles and social platforms. The video inside is almost always lossy, so repeated re-encoding gradually reduces quality.
- Compression
- Lossy
- Transparency
- –
- Animation
- –
- Introduced
- 2001 · Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)
3GP
3GPP multimedia file
3GP is a multimedia container defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project for 3G mobile phones. It holds low-resolution H.263 or H.264 video and AMR or AAC audio, designed to be small enough for MMS messages and early mobile networks. It was the standard video format on feature phones and early Android devices. Many modern players, editors and websites handle it poorly.
- Compression
- Lossy
- Transparency
- –
- Animation
- –
- Introduced
- 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
MP4 goes down to 3GP for hardware that stopped evolving in the 2000s: a feature phone, a child's media player or an MMS message that needs a tiny, low-resolution clip it can actually decode.
From the first camera phones to today: where 3GP fits
1998
3GPP is founded
Telecom standards bodies form the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, which later defines the 3GP file format for mobile video.
2003
Camera phones record clips
Phones such as the Nokia 3650 record short 176 × 144 videos as 3GP files, sized for MMS.
2009
Smartphones move on
The iPhone 3GS, Apple's first iPhone that records video, saves MOV files; Android phones settle on MP4 for normal recording.
Today
A compatibility target
3GP lives on in older handsets, low-cost players and archives, which is why you convert to it rather than record in it.
Expect a dramatic drop in size. A one-minute 1080p phone clip typically weighs several dozen megabytes, and a 4K minute passes the 95 MB upload limit; at 240p, 15 fps and 96 kbps sound the same minute typically lands in the low single-digit megabytes. Sound is the easiest place to save further, since speech stays clear at 96 kbps and many feature phones have a single small speaker anyway.
The conversion only goes one way in quality. Detail removed by scaling down to 240p cannot be recovered, so keep the MP4 and treat the 3GP as a copy for one device. If you later receive 3GP clips from an old phone and want them on a computer, use 3GP to MP4 instead. When the problem is a size limit rather than an old decoder, compress video keeps the modern format and only lowers the bitrate.
MP4 to 3GP converter questions
Which phones still need 3GP video?
Mostly handsets from roughly 2003 to 2012 made by Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG, plus low-cost MP4/MP3 players sold for children. Many of them only decode small frame sizes and stutter on anything above 15 to 20 fps, so the format and the settings both matter.
How do I make a 3GP small enough for MMS?
Carriers cap multimedia messages, often somewhere between 300 KB and 1 MB, and the limit differs by network. Tick Limit file size and enter the cap in KB; the converter lowers the bitrate until the clip fits. Keep the clip to a few seconds, since a 300 KB message cannot hold much video.
Why is the converted 3GP so blurry on my computer?
At 240p the picture has about one twentieth of the pixels of a 1080p MP4. On a 2-inch phone screen it looks sharp; enlarged on a monitor it looks soft. That trade is the point of the format, so keep your MP4 as the master copy.
Is 3G2 the same as 3GP?
They are siblings. 3GP was defined by 3GPP for GSM and UMTS networks, and 3G2 by 3GPP2 for CDMA carriers such as Verizon and Sprint in the US. Both are built on the same ISO base media file format as MP4. This page writes 3GP; 3G2 files are accepted as input.
Does 3GP support stereo sound?
The container allows AAC in stereo, which is what this converter writes at 96 kbps. Phones from the early 2000s often recorded mono AMR speech audio instead, but they generally play AAC. If a very old handset stays silent, try 128 kbps or check its manual for supported audio.