Where can I host an 8K showreel?
Somewhere that never re-encodes it.

The first is whether the host alters the file, and that one is solvable. uncompressed.io stores the file you upload and hands the player those same bytes: no adaptive ladder, no rendition list, no lower version standing by, so nothing on our side imposes a resolution or bitrate ceiling. An 8K HEVC or AV1 master is served exactly as you exported it. The one real limit is 5 TB per file, checked in the browser and on the server before the transfer begins. A reel runs one to three minutes, so it fits inside that ceiling many times over at any rate you might plausibly finish at, and the runtime arithmetic for long-form 8K, where the ceiling does start to bind, is on our 8K video hosting guide.

The second thing is whether the viewer’s machine can decode 8K, and no host on earth solves that. 8K plays when the viewer’s hardware decodes it. Every sentence on this page carries that caveat, because a file streaming untouched from our side says nothing about what the machine at the other end can do with it.

Decoding 8K is work done by the recipient’s machine. A host can guarantee that the bytes leaving its storage are the bytes you uploaded. It cannot guarantee that a laptop, a phone or a five-year-old workstation has a decoder for the codec, the profile and the frame size you chose. That is answered by hardware.

The best published evidence of how narrow above-4K support is comes from Vimeo, not from us. Its article on watching above 4K lists Safari 11 and up and Edge 15 and up with supported hardware, macOS 10.13 High Sierra and Windows 10, and states that mobile devices on iOS and Android, including the Vimeo app and mobile browsers, do not support playback above 4K. That is a description of the device population rather than a Vimeo restriction, and every host, ours included, faces the same population.

Start with YouTube, because a private send there is less private than most people assume. Its help centre states that ads may appear on your uploaded videos even if you have not monetized them, and that YouTube may place ads on videos in channels that are not in the Partner Program. Google’s own player documentation states that related videos cannot be disabled in the embedded player; setting the rel parameter to 0 only narrows them to your own channel. And YouTube states that unlisted videos can be seen and shared by anyone with the link, and that anyone with the link can also reshare it. On a public channel that costs you nothing. On a reel going to one producer, somebody else’s advertising can land in your best ninety seconds, and the cut you sent to one person is one forward away from being everywhere.

Vimeo is quieter on ads: its Free plan page publishes no ads before, after or on your video. Its gates are commercial rather than editorial. Uploading and displaying your own logo in the player requires a Standard, Advanced, Pro, Business, Premium or Enterprise plan, and letting a viewer download the file requires a paid plan. Those are the two things a reel send tends to need: your name on the page, and the option of handing the file to the person who asked for it.

There is also a case where the right answer is not us at all. If the reel’s job is to be found rather than to be judged, a public platform is its proper home: an audience and a recommendation engine are things we do not have and will not pretend to, and Vimeo’s showcases remain the address most producers expect a reel to live at, with even a free account able to create up to three of them. Put it where the discovery happens, and keep the untouched master here for the sends that decide a job.

When 8K is genuinely right, it is right for a specific reason: the reel is going to a colourist, a post supervisor or a client with a large display and a machine chosen for the job, and the point of the send is that they see the resolution and the grade you finished. What you need from a host then is that it changes nothing, and that it does not decide on your behalf which version the viewer receives.

An 8K reel is a large file that a small number of important people watch, which is exactly the shape a bandwidth meter punishes. Here, plans include storage, team seats and caption allowances. The Terms state that the exact file you upload is the file your viewers receive, that there are no bandwidth caps, and that streaming is unlimited on every plan within that plan’s storage allowance. The pricing page adds that external client viewers do not require a paid team seat, so a reel thirty producers open costs the same as one nobody opens.

Starter is free with 5 GB of hot storage and one film at a time, which is enough to host a single reel and test the whole chain end to end. The paid plans run from $9 a month for 100 GB hot plus 100 GB cold to $219 a month for 1 TB hot plus 8 TB cold. If you are building a page of films rather than sending a single reel, the layout and branding side of that is covered in video portfolio hosting for filmmakers.