Instagram Post Size 2026: 1080 x 1440 and Every Ratio

The Instagram post size that works hardest today is 1080 x 1440 pixels, a 3:4 portrait. It fills the feed and it fills the profile grid tile without a crop. The other supported feed shapes are 1080 x 1350 (4:5 portrait), 1080 x 1080 (1:1 square), and 1080 x 566 (1.91:1 landscape), while stories and reels are 1080 x 1920 (9:16). Two changes in 2025 are why so many size guides disagree: Instagram moved the profile grid from squares to tall 3:4 tiles, then added 3:4 as an upload ratio. This guide gives the current numbers, where they come from, and what still gets cropped.

Instagram post size: the exact spec

Upload at 1080 pixels wide and pick the height from the ratio you want. Meta's published Instagram media specifications set the hard limits: a minimum width of 320 pixels, a maximum width of 1440 pixels, an 8 MB cap, JPEG, and the sRGB color space.

Four details behind those numbers:

• 1080 wide is the working standard, not a ceiling. Meta documents a 1440 pixel maximum width and scales anything larger down, so a 1440 x 1920 export is fine and gives Instagram sharper source material to resize. Anything under 320 pixels wide gets scaled up, which is where soft, mushy posts come from.
• 3:4 uploads are a 2025 addition. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the change on Threads in May 2025: Instagram "now supports 3:4 aspect ratio photos, the format that almost every phone camera defaults to," for single photos and carousels. Before that, 4:5 was the tallest a feed post could go, as contemporaneous coverage of the update describes.
• Third-party schedulers can lag the app. Meta's API reference still documents a supported publishing range of "4:5 to 1.91:1", so a tool that posts through the API may crop your 1080 x 1440 file to 1080 x 1350. If a scheduler keeps trimming your posts, publish those from the app instead.
• There is no official profile picture pixel spec. The safe move is a square upload comfortably above the 320 pixel minimum, 1080 x 1080 for example, since Instagram masks it to a circle and crops the corners away.

What aspect ratio is 1080 x 1440?

1080 x 1440 is 3:4. Divide 1080 by 1440 and you get 0.75, which is exactly 3/4. It is the tallest photo the Instagram feed accepts and the only upload ratio that matches the profile grid tile pixel for pixel.

That is why it is the size worth defaulting to. Every other Instagram number resolves the same way, by dividing width by height:

• 1080 x 1440 = 3:4 (0.75). Tallest feed post, exact grid tile.
• 1080 x 1350 = 4:5 (0.8). The classic portrait post, slightly shorter than the grid tile.
• 1080 x 1080 = 1:1 (1.0). Square.
• 1080 x 1920 = 9:16 (0.5625). Stories and reels.
• 1080 x 566 = 1.91:1 (1.907). The widest the feed accepts.

A useful shortcut when you are checking a file: 3:4 means the height is the width plus a third, so 1080 becomes 1440. 4:5 means the height is the width plus a quarter, so 1080 becomes 1350. The 90 pixel gap between those two heights is the entire 4:5 versus 3:4 debate.

Is 4:3 or 16:9 better for Instagram?

4:3, though neither is what you actually want. Instagram is a vertical surface, so a portrait 3:4 or 4:5 post takes far more screen height than either landscape shape.

Between the two, Instagram's feed accepts a range from 1.91:1 landscape at the wide end to 3:4 portrait at the tall end. A 4:3 photo is landscape and sits inside that range, so it posts without a crop, but it is the horizontal orientation of 4:3, not the vertical 3:4 that fills the grid. A 16:9 image is wider than 1.91:1, so Instagram trims the left and right edges to fit. If your source is 16:9 video framing and you want the whole frame, letterbox it onto a 4:5 or 1:1 canvas rather than letting the crop choose for you. Stories and reels are the one place a tall 9:16 file is correct, and 9:16 in the feed gets cropped down.

Is Instagram post 1080 x 1350 or 1080 x 1440?

Both post fine, so the 4:5 versus 3:4 question is really a question about your profile, not your feed.

• 1080 x 1440 (3:4) is the tallest the feed accepts and it matches the profile grid tile exactly, so the thumbnail shows the whole image.
• 1080 x 1350 (4:5) is slightly shorter than the grid tile, so the grid crops a little off the top and bottom of the thumbnail. In the feed itself it displays in full.

Instagram switched the profile grid from 1:1 squares to tall 3:4 rectangles in January 2025, and Mosseri's reasoning was that most uploads are already vertical: "Rectangles do a better job showing off those photos and videos." That grid crop is the whole reason the 4:5 versus 3:4 question exists.

So pick by what you are optimising. Choose 1080 x 1440 if your profile is a portfolio people browse as a grid, since nothing is ever trimmed. Choose 1080 x 1350 if you have years of 4:5 archive files and consistency in the feed matters more than a perfect thumbnail. Either way the crop below explains what you are trading.

Instagram grid size: what the profile thumbnail crops

The Instagram grid size is 3:4, and there is no setting to change it. Instagram replaced the square profile grid with tall 3:4 tiles in January 2025 for every account, so the only control you have is the ratio you upload at.

A 1080 x 1440 post lands in the tile untouched. Anything shorter gets center-cropped to 3:4 for the thumbnail, while the full image still shows when someone taps in.

What that costs you, by upload size:

• 1080 x 1440 (3:4): no crop. The grid thumbnail is the whole post.
• 1080 x 1350 (4:5): roughly 90 pixels trimmed, split between the top and bottom of the thumbnail.
• 1080 x 1080 (1:1): the square is padded or cropped to fill a taller tile, so square-composed art reads smaller in the grid than it used to.
• 1080 x 1920 (9:16) reel covers: the heaviest crop of all. Roughly a third of the frame disappears, which is why reel cover text belongs in the middle third.

The practical rule is a single safe zone: keep faces, logos, and headline text inside the central 3:4 area of whatever you upload, and the grid can never cut anything that matters. If your feed is planned as a multi-post layout, design the sequence at 3:4 tiles rather than squares, because the old 3x3 square mockups no longer match what visitors see.

How do I resize a pic to fit Instagram?

Set the canvas to the target size first, then fit the photo to it: 1080 x 1440, 1080 x 1350, 1080 x 1080, or 1080 x 566. Scale the image to cover the canvas and move the subject to the middle before exporting.

Resizing on your side beats cropping blind, because Instagram never asks which part of the frame you wanted to keep. For anything you are making from scratch, five steps and the crop stops being a surprise:

1. Pick the ratio before you make the image. Portrait 3:4 or 4:5 takes the most screen height in the feed, which is why most creators default to portrait. Square suits product shots and grids that need to stay tidy. Landscape suits wide scenes and is the smallest footprint in the feed.
2. Build the canvas at 1080 pixels wide. 1080 x 1440, 1080 x 1350, 1080 x 1080, or 1080 x 566. Starting at the target size means no upscaling and nothing to resize later.
3. Create the artwork at that ratio. Shoot it, design it, or generate it. If you would rather describe the post than build it, the AI social media post generator makes feed-ready graphics in Instagram ratios from a brief, and free trial credits cover a first run.
4. Add text in a layout tool, centered. AI image models render lettering unreliably, so generate clean artwork and typeset the words separately in Canva, Figma, or Photoshop. Keep type inside the middle of the frame so the 3:4 grid crop cannot eat it.
5. Export as JPEG in sRGB, under 8 MB, and post. If a scheduler crops the result, publish from the Instagram app instead.

For repeat formats, working from a template beats rebuilding the canvas each time. The carousel graphics tool holds one ratio across a whole swipe sequence, and the quote card tool handles the text-led posts that make up most feeds.

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Instagram story size and reel dimensions

The Instagram story size is 1080 x 1920 pixels at 9:16, and reels use the same canvas. Meta's media specifications recommend 9:16 for both story images and reels, cap story images at 8 MB, and recommend a 9:16 reel cover photo "to avoid cropping". Story videos run up to 60 seconds each, reels up to 15 minutes, with a maximum of 1920 horizontal pixels.

The number that matters more than the canvas is the usable area inside it. Instagram draws its own interface over the top and bottom of every story: the account row and close button up top, the reply bar, stickers, and link buttons at the bottom. In practice, keeping text and logos roughly 250 pixels clear of the top edge and 250 pixels clear of the bottom leaves a safe center band that survives on every phone. Backgrounds can run to the edges freely, the same discipline a Facebook cover photo needs.

One more habit worth keeping: design story art at 1080 x 1920 rather than cropping a feed post into it. A 4:5 post stretched to 9:16 either letterboxes or loses a third of its content, and both look like a repost rather than a story.

Instagram carousel size

The Instagram carousel size is set by your first slide. Meta's content publishing documentation is explicit: "Carousel images are all cropped based on the first image in the carousel, with the default being a 1:1 aspect ratio." So the first slide decides the shape and every slide after it is forced into that shape. Build the whole set at one ratio, 1080 x 1440 or 1080 x 1350, and lead with a slide already at that size.

Instagram raised the carousel limit from 10 to 20 photos or videos, though the rollout has been uneven and some accounts still cap at 10. Meta's publishing API also still documents a 10 item limit, so long carousels are an in-app job. Whatever the count, the design rules are the same: one ratio throughout, a first slide that earns the swipe, and no critical text near the top or bottom edges where the grid crop lands. Our guide to making Instagram carousels covers the sequencing side of it.

Social media image sizes beyond Instagram

If you are cross-posting, the social media image sizes below are the ones each platform publishes itself, so they are the safe defaults rather than the ones that circulate secondhand:

YouTube's figure comes from its custom thumbnail guidelines, which also set a 640 pixel minimum width and a 2 MB cap on mobile uploads against 50 MB on desktop. Pinterest recommends "a 2:3 aspect ratio, or 1000 x 1500 pixels" in its product specs and crops taller pins in the feed. For the banner formats, we keep separate specs for the YouTube thumbnail size, the Facebook cover photo size, the Facebook ad size, and the LinkedIn banner size.

The practical cross-posting shortcut is to design one vertical master and one horizontal master. A 1080 x 1440 portrait covers Instagram feed and adapts to Pinterest with a small extension. A 1080 x 1920 vertical covers stories, reels, and every other short-video surface. Everything else is a crop of one of those two.

Getting the size right without redesigning every post

Set the canvas once and the sizing question disappears: 1080 x 1440 for feed posts and carousels, 1080 x 1920 for stories and reels, key content in the center, JPEG under 8 MB. What is left is the part that actually earns saves and follows, which is the idea and the craft on the slide.

If the bottleneck is producing enough on-brand graphics at the right ratio rather than knowing the numbers, that is what the AI social media post generator is for: describe the post, get feed-ready art in Instagram dimensions, and typeset any headline on top. For AI-generated people and lifestyle imagery specifically, our guide to AI Instagram models covers the consistency problem that trips up most first attempts.