uncompressed.io vs Vimeo
22 Mbps at 4K, or the file you uploaded.

Read the qualifier Vimeo attaches to its own table, because it matters more than the number. The listed bitrates are a maximum, and a video could transcode at a lower bitrate depending on the complexity of the image. So 22 Mbps is the best case for a 4K viewer, not the rate you are sold. A grain-heavy night exterior is exactly the shot that spends bitrate, and exactly the shot an encoder under a ceiling will spend less on.

Here there is no ladder and no ceiling, because there is no second file. The player is a plain video element pointed at a time-limited signed link to the object you uploaded, and the browser pulls byte ranges out of it. A 150 Mbps export plays as a 150 Mbps export. Nothing in the upload path writes another rendition, so there is nothing for a player to switch down to. That is the whole of the advantage, and the whole of the cost, which the next section is about.

Vimeo documents what follows the threshold. Automated notifications fire when it is exceeded. Direct outreach follows if an account exceeds 2 TB at least twice in twelve months, or exceeds 10 TB once in twelve months. Once contacted, the account has a seven-day window to reach a resolution. If no resolution is reached, the account is at risk of temporary suspension, which means the videos stop playing for viewers wherever they are embedded. Vimeo also publishes exemptions, effective 18 April 2022, for creative professionals with no more than half their viewership from monetisation or commercial use, for nonprofits with an annual budget under one million dollars, and for accounts whose viewership is mostly consumed on a strategic hosting partner platform.

None of that is unreasonable for a business that pays for delivery. It is simply a different contract from the one here, where the Terms state that storage is the only meter and that there are no bandwidth caps, and the pricing page states unlimited views, uploads and viewers on every plan including the free one. A film that goes around the industry costs the same as one nobody opens. The corollary is that a large library costs money even when nothing plays, which is the honest inverse of the same trade.

One more, because it gets misrepresented in comparisons like this one. Vimeo publishes an AI policy, and it is a real one: it states that Vimeo will not allow generative AI models to be trained using videos hosted on its platform without your explicit consent, even on its free offerings. Anyone implying Vimeo is careless here is wrong. Our difference is narrower and worth stating precisely. Ours is a clause in the Terms rather than a policy page, it says your files are never sold and never used to train AI, and it carries a 30-day notice rule before the clause itself can change. Vimeo’s wording is consent-gated. Whether a contractual commitment with a notice period is worth more to you than a published policy is a judgement, not a fact, and you should read both.

The shape of the decision is simple once both meters are on the table. If your library is small and your films are watched a great deal, the delivery meter is the thing that will bite, and a host that does not count plays is worth the move. If your library is enormous and mostly dormant, storage is the thing that will bite, and a plan with 7 TB in it may well be cheaper than paying us for the same room. Work out which of those two you are before you read another comparison, this one included.

If you do move, the library comes across without passing through your own connection. Connect Vimeo once, the films appear, and the transfer runs server to server with nothing re-encoded on the way. What arrives is bounded by what Vimeo will hand over: source-file storage and downloads are paid-account features there, so a free member has no download route on Vimeo at all and uploads their masters from their own drive. The migration guide walks the whole path, and the full published ladder has every rendition Vimeo documents, including the pixel thresholds that decide whether a 4K rendition is generated at all.