Every Instagram dimension that matters in one place — plus the part most size guides leave out: your feed post and your profile grid crop to different shapes, so a photo that looks right in one loses its edges in the other.
Most size guides give you a table and stop. The table is the easy part — Instagram has published the same three feed ratios for years. What trips people up is that the shape Instagram shows your post in and the shape it shows your profile grid in are no longer the same, so an image that fills the feed perfectly quietly loses its left and right edges the moment someone visits your profile.
This page is the numbers, the crop behaviour behind them, and a preview that runs on your own image so you can see what disappears before you post.
Stays on your device — nothing is uploaded.
| Format | Upload size | Aspect ratio | What it is good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portrait — recommended | 1080 × 1350 | 4:5 | Maximum height in the feed; the default choice for almost everything |
| Square | 1080 × 1080 | 1:1 | Grid-first accounts and carousels mixing photo with graphics |
| Landscape | 1080 × 566 | 1.91:1 | Wide photography and link-style graphics; smallest footprint on a phone |
| Carousel | 1080 × 1350 | 4:5 | All slides must share one ratio — the first slide sets it |
Portrait wins by default for a simple reason: a phone screen is tall, and 4:5 occupies more of it than 1:1 or 1.91:1 do. More screen time per post is the cheapest reach advantage available, and it costs nothing but a crop decision.
The supported range is published by Meta: feed placements accept everything from 1.91:1 through to 4:5, and the feed design requirements set out the same bounds. Anything outside that range gets cropped to fit, so pick one of the three rather than letting Instagram choose.
| Item | Size | Aspect ratio | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reel / Story video | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 | Full-screen vertical |
| Reel cover image | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 | Cropped to 3:4 on your profile grid |
| Story image | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 | Static images work the same as video |
| Story link / sticker area | centre of frame | — | Stickers placed low collide with the reply bar |
| Max Reel length | up to 3 minutes | — | Changes periodically — check before planning a series |
| Item | Upload size | How it displays |
|---|---|---|
| Profile picture | 1080 × 1080 | Circle crop, roughly 320 px across — corners are always lost |
| Story highlight cover | 1080 × 1920 | Circle crop taken from the centre of the frame |
| Grid thumbnail | — | 3:4 centre crop of whatever the post was |
The circle crop on profile pictures and highlight covers catches people out more than any other number here. A square logo with tight margins loses its corners; a highlight cover with text near the edge loses the text. Centre the subject and leave generous padding — you are designing for the inscribed circle, not the square.
Instagram re-encodes everything you upload. You cannot avoid that, but you can stop giving its encoder extra work — which is where most visible quality loss actually comes from. Meta publishes minimum pixel requirements per placement; the settings below sit comfortably above them.
| Platform | Format | Size | Aspect ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok | Video | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 |
| YouTube | Shorts | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 |
| YouTube | Thumbnail | 1280 × 720 | 16:9 |
| YouTube | Channel banner | 2560 × 1440 | 16:9 |
| Snapchat | Spotlight / Story | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 |
Because the canvas is shared, a Reel can usually be posted to TikTok and Shorts untouched — but each app puts its interface in a slightly different place, so text that clears Instagram's caption bar can still land under TikTok's. Design once for the tightest of the three and you can post everywhere.
If you need to pull an existing video down to re-cut it, our Instagram video downloader and story downloader both work in the browser, and the YouTube thumbnail downloader gives you any thumbnail at full 1280 × 720.
1080 × 1350 pixels, a 4:5 portrait. It is the tallest ratio Instagram accepts in the feed, so it occupies more of a phone screen than a square or landscape post, and it survives the profile grid's 3:4 crop with only a small trim from each side.
Because the grid previews everything at 3:4, regardless of what you uploaded. A 4:5 portrait loses a strip from each side; a 1:1 square loses the top and bottom. The post itself is untouched — only the thumbnail is cropped.
Yes. Every upload is re-encoded. You can minimise the damage by exporting at exactly 1080 px wide in the sRGB colour profile, which means the encoder does not have to rescale or convert colour before compressing.
1080 × 1920, the same as the Reel. Remember that your profile grid shows a 3:4 centre crop of that cover, so anything important placed near the top or bottom of the cover will not appear on your profile.
Yes, 1:1 is fully supported and nothing is broken about it. It simply takes less vertical space in the feed than 4:5 does, and it loses more height to the profile grid's 3:4 crop.
If you take one number away: 1080 × 1350, with anything you cannot afford to lose kept away from the outer edges. That single decision covers the feed, survives the grid, and leaves you room when you crop the same asset to 9:16 for a Reel.
Sources: Meta Business Help Centre — aspect ratios supported by placement, Instagram feed design requirements, Stories design requirements and minimum pixel requirements. Note these are Meta's advertising specifications — the aspect-ratio bounds and interface geometry are the same for organic posts, but the documents are written for ads.
Written and fact-checked against those sources in September 2026 by the FlowFame team. Aspect ratios have been stable for years; safe-zone margins and length limits are the parts Instagram changes, so treat those as approximate. Spot something out of date? Contact us — and read more About us.
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