Microsoft Teams caps a single meeting recording at 4 hours or 1.5 GB — whichever one is reached first. Microsoft's limits page states it in a single table row: "Meeting recording maximum length 4 hours or 1.5 GB. When this limit is reached, the recording ends and automatically restarts."
Two things in that sentence get mangled almost every time it is repeated second-hand. The first is the word or: these are two independent ceilings, not a pair of conditions that both have to be met. The second is "ends and automatically restarts" — reaching the limit does not kill your recording, it splits it.
The limits, at a glance
| What | Official value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum length of one recording file | 4 hours or 1.5 GB, whichever is reached first | Limits and specifications for Microsoft Teams |
| What happens at that limit | "the recording ends and automatically restarts" | same page |
| Maximum length of the meeting itself | 30 hours | same page |
| Microsoft's own size estimate | "The size of a one-hour recording is 400 MB" | Teams recording and transcript storage page |
| Recordings that fail to upload, kept for local download | 20 days on the limits page, 21 days on the storage page | see the conflict below |
| Default expiration for recordings and transcripts | 120 days | Manage Teams recording expiration policy |
Note that the meeting limit and the recording limit are different numbers on the same page. A Teams meeting can run for 30 hours; the recording of it cannot be one file for 30 hours.
The size gate usually fires before the time gate
This is the part the forum answers miss entirely, and it follows from two official numbers rather than from anyone's guesswork.
Microsoft publishes exactly one figure for how big a Teams recording is, in the storage planning section: "The size of a one-hour recording is 400 MB."
Run that against the 1.5 GB ceiling and the split lands at roughly 3 hours 45 minutes — before the 4-hour mark, not at it. So for a recording that tracks Microsoft's own estimate, the number that actually ends the file is the size one, and the "4 hours" everyone quotes is the later of the two gates.
Two honest caveats, because this is a calculation and not a published figure:
- Microsoft does not say what resolution, bitrate, or kind of content that 400 MB assumes, nor whether it is an average or a ceiling. Screen-share-heavy hours and camera-heavy hours will not weigh the same.
- It follows that 3 hours 45 minutes is a planning heuristic, not a guarantee. The direction is what matters: plan around 1.5 GB, not around 4 hours.
What "ends and automatically restarts" means in practice
If your meeting outruns either gate, you end up with more than one file, and that is designed behaviour rather than a failure. A six-hour session produces two recordings, not one truncated one.
Microsoft's end-user support page describes the same mechanic from a different angle: "The recording stops automatically once everyone leaves the meeting. If someone forgets to leave, the recording will end and automatically restart every four hours until the last participant leaves the meeting."
Read that page on its own and you would conclude the rule is purely a four-hour timer tied to someone forgetting to hang up. It only mentions the time figure, and it frames the split as an accident. The complete statement — both gates, and the fact that the split is normal — is on the admin limits page. When the two pages disagree in scope like this, the limits page is the one with the size number in it.
One related detail from the same support page, because it changes who is responsible for stopping: "Recording continues even if the person who started the recording leaves the meeting." The clock keeps running whether or not the person who pressed Record is still there.
Why the file size still matters after the split
The split solves the "one enormous file" problem and immediately creates a storage one, because recordings are not stored somewhere separate with its own allowance. Microsoft is explicit: "Teams meeting recording files live in OneDrive and SharePoint and are included in your quota for those services."
Where each file lands depends on the meeting type. For meetings and events the recording goes to the organizer's OneDrive Recordings folder, "even if the organizer didn't attend the meeting or event." For channel meetings it goes to the channel's SharePoint site, in a folder named Recordings. For 1:1 and group calls, it goes to "the OneDrive account of the user who selected Record."
Sending one of these outward is its own problem. Microsoft's guidance on sharing recordings says plainly that "External sharing isn't designed for the distribution of large files or a large number of files" — which is a good reason to hand someone a compressed copy instead of a share link to a 1.5 GB original.
What to do when you hit it
- Plan long sessions as segments. If you already know a workshop will run past three and a half hours, decide where the break goes instead of discovering the seam later.
- Download and archive deliberately. Microsoft's playback page notes that the recording "is an .mp4 file", so a downloaded copy is an ordinary video you can store wherever you like.
- Shrink before you distribute. A recording sized for archival is rarely sized for someone to watch on a laptop, and compressing it is the difference between a share link and an attachment.
Try it right here
Runs in your browser. Your file is not uploaded anywhere.
This runs entirely inside your browser tab — the file is read from disk, re-encoded locally, and handed back. Nothing is uploaded, which matters when the thing you are shrinking is an internal meeting. If you want to understand the trade-offs behind the preset rather than accept it, how to compress a video without losing quality walks through what bitrate and resolution actually cost you, and the full compressor exposes the same controls.
Platform-specific gotchas
A long recording may quietly miss its automatic transcript. Microsoft's page on video transcripts gives two different size limits in two different sections. One says "The size limit for running automatic transcripts is 1GB and 4 hours." The other says "Transcript and closed caption generation are only supported for videos less than 4GB in size and less than 4 hours." A recording that ran close to the 1.5 GB gate sits between those two numbers. Plan against the more conservative 1 GB figure, because a missing transcript is discovered too late to redo.
The transcript is not an SRT file. Organizers and co-organizers "can download it as a .docx or .vtt file" — those are the two formats Microsoft names. If your editor or platform wants SubRip, convert with VTT to SRT rather than renaming the extension.
The 20 vs 21 day number. When a recording cannot be uploaded, the limits page gives 20 days of local-download availability while the storage page and the troubleshooting page both say 21. Act on 20 — downloading a day early has never cost anyone anything.
Do not infer the codec from the extension. The only format detail Microsoft states is the .mp4 container. The video and audio codecs, resolution, and frame rate are not published in these pages; check the official documentation if you need them.
FAQ
Is the Teams recording limit 4 hours or 1.5 GB? Both, independently. Microsoft's limits page says "4 hours or 1.5 GB" — either ceiling alone ends the current file. It is not a requirement that both are met.
Why did my Teams recording split into two files? Because one of those two gates was reached. Microsoft's wording is that "the recording ends and automatically restarts", so the second file is the continuation, not a duplicate or a corrupted retry.
How long can a Teams meeting itself run? 30 hours, per the same limits page. That is the meeting, not the recording — a 30-hour meeting would produce a series of recording files.
How big is a Teams meeting recording? Microsoft's only published estimate is "The size of a one-hour recording is 400 MB." It does not state the quality settings behind that number, so use it for capacity planning rather than as a precise expectation.
Why didn't my long recording get an automatic transcript? It may have exceeded the size limit for automatic transcription. Microsoft's own page gives both 1GB and 4GB in different sections, so a recording near 1.5 GB falls in the ambiguous band. Check the official documentation for the value that applies to your tenant.
Browse the rest of the platform limits we have documented, or see all Clapr tools — every one of them runs locally in your browser.
Figures cited from Microsoft's Teams limits, recording storage, expiration policy, and transcript documentation, checked 16 September 2026. Microsoft revises these pages; verify against the official docs before relying on them.
