Export everything 1080 px wide. The feed accepts any ratio from 1.91:1 landscape down to 4:5 portrait, so 1080 × 1350 (4:5) claims the most screen space and 1080 × 1080 (1:1) is the safe square. Reels and Stories are 1080 × 1920 (9:16). Anything outside the feed’s window gets cropped for you.
Most “Instagram image size” articles are a list of numbers with no explanation of where the numbers come from or what happens when you miss them. That is the useless half. The useful half is understanding that Instagram has exactly one hard rule — an aspect ratio window for the feed — and that everything else is either a consequence of that window or a consequence of Instagram re-encoding your file after upload.
This guide gives you the full table, then explains what each row is actually protecting you from.
The one number that matters: 1080 pixels wide
Every size in the table below is 1080 px on its short-or-standard edge. That is not an accident and it is not arbitrary advice copied between blogs — it is the width Instagram has served full-size feed images at for years. Upload something 4000 px wide and Instagram will downscale it during re-encode; upload something 640 px wide and it gets upscaled, which looks worse than the downscale would have.
Instagram does not publish its encoder settings, so nobody outside the company can tell you the exact quality ladder or bitrate. What you can observe is consistent: images come back smaller than they went in, JPEG artefacts appear in flat gradients and around fine text, and files that were already close to the target size survive with the least visible damage. Exporting at 1080 px wide is the practical way to hand the encoder as little work as possible.
The complete size table
| Surface | Export size | Ratio | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed — portrait | 1080 × 1350 px | 4:5 | The tallest the feed accepts. Takes the most vertical space on a phone screen, which is why most creators default to it. |
| Feed — square | 1080 × 1080 px | 1:1 | Posts untouched. Predictable in every context, including old third-party embeds. |
| Feed — landscape | 1080 × 566 px | 1.91:1 | The widest the feed accepts. Anything wider is trimmed on the left and right. |
| Carousel slide | 1080 × 1350 px | 4:5 | Every slide in one carousel shares the ratio of the first slide. Mixed ratios get forced into line. |
| Reels | 1080 × 1920 px | 9:16 | Full-screen vertical. Instagram’s own buttons and caption are drawn on top of your frame. |
| Stories | 1080 × 1920 px | 9:16 | Same frame as Reels, different interface furniture covering it. |
| Profile photo | 1080 × 1080 px | 1:1 | Displayed as a circle. Everything outside the inscribed circle is invisible — keep the subject centred. |
| Profile grid tile | a crop of your post | 4:5 | You do not upload this. Instagram crops your post to fill the tile, so a face at the very bottom of a 4:5 image can vanish from the grid view. |
If you would rather not memorise any of that, drop the file into the image and video size checker. It reads the intrinsic dimensions in your browser, tells you whether the file posts clean or gets cropped, shows you exactly which pixels are discarded, and re-exports to any of the target sizes above with a focal point you drag yourself.
The feed’s acceptance window, explained properly
Think of the feed as accepting a range, not a list. Expressed as width divided by height:
- 1.91 — the widest. A 1.91:1 landscape image.
- 1.00 — a square, sitting comfortably in the middle.
- 0.80 — the tallest. A 4:5 portrait image.
Any ratio between 0.80 and 1.91 posts without a forced crop. A 5:4 image (1.25)? Fine. A 3:2 photo straight out of a camera (1.50)? Fine. A 16:9 frame (1.78)? Fine, just short. It is only when you fall outside the window that Instagram makes the decision for you.
Outside the window, the behaviour is a centre crop by default:
- Taller than 4:5 — a 9:16 export (0.5625), for example — loses top and bottom. A 1080 × 1920 image posted to the feed keeps 1080 × 1350 and throws away 570 px of height, roughly 285 px off each end on a centre crop. That is where headroom, chins and captions burned into the bottom of a frame disappear.
- Wider than 1.91:1 — a panorama, say — loses left and right, which is usually catastrophic for a panorama.
The mistake almost everyone makes
Exporting one master file at 1080 × 1920 and posting it everywhere. It is correct for Reels and Stories and it is wrong for the feed, where it is 0.5625 against a 0.80 floor and loses about 30% of its height. If you want one image to work in both places, build it at 1080 × 1920 and keep every important element inside the middle 1080 × 1350 — then export the feed version as its own crop rather than letting Instagram guess.
Video: dimensions and duration
Video adds a second axis of failure — length — on top of the ratio problem.
| Property | Reels | Stories |
|---|---|---|
| Frame | 1080 × 1920 px (9:16) | 1080 × 1920 px (9:16) |
| Common length cap | around 90 seconds | 60 seconds per segment |
| Extended length | up to 3 minutes on many accounts | longer uploads split into 60-second segments automatically |
| Codec that always works | H.264 MP4 | H.264 MP4 |
Length limits are one of the areas Instagram changes most often and rolls out unevenly, so treat “90 seconds” as the number that is safe everywhere and “3 minutes” as the number that is available to many but not all accounts. The size checker flags both thresholds when you drop a video in, and reads the width, height and duration straight from your browser’s own decoder — no upload, no transcode.
A landscape clip in a 9:16 Reel is the worst case. A 16:9 video (1.78) placed in a 9:16 frame (0.5625) loses roughly 68% of its width if cropped to fill, or gets thick bars top and bottom if letterboxed. Neither is good. Re-frame vertically in an editor before you upload.
Carousels: one ratio, ten slides
A carousel takes its ratio from the first slide and applies it to the rest. Upload a square first and your gorgeous 4:5 second slide gets trimmed. Decide the ratio before you export anything, and export all slides at the same pixel dimensions.
If you are cutting one wide image into a swipeable panorama, the alignment has to be exact — a one-pixel drift between panels reads as a visible seam when someone swipes. The carousel splitter handles this by scaling your source once to the full carousel width and then slicing on exact integer pixel boundaries, so panels join without a gap. Panels come out 1080 px wide at 1350 px (4:5), 1080 px (1:1) or 1440 px (3:4) tall.
What happens after you press share
This part is observed behaviour, not published spec, and it is worth being precise about the difference. Instagram re-encodes uploads. That much is obvious from comparing the file you uploaded to the file the app serves back. What is not documented is the quality ladder, the target file size, the chroma subsampling, or whether the treatment differs by account, connection speed or upload path.
What holds up in practice:
- Flat gradients band. Skies, soft backdrops and duotone graphics are where re-encoding shows first. Adding a very small amount of noise before export often survives better than a perfectly smooth gradient.
- Thin text degrades. Hairline fonts and 1 px strokes come back mushy. Use heavier weights on anything you need people to read.
- High-contrast edges ring. Pure white text on pure black picks up visible halos.
- Uploading over a weak connection can make it worse. Widely reported by creators, never confirmed by Instagram. Treat it as folklore worth testing rather than fact.
You cannot control the encoder. You can control how much work you give it: correct dimensions, sRGB colour, moderate compression on export rather than maximum, and no unnecessary upscaling.
A five-step export checklist
- Decide the surface first — feed, carousel, Reel, Story. They are not interchangeable.
- Export at 1080 px wide, in sRGB, as JPEG at high (not maximum) quality or PNG for flat graphics and text.
- Check the ratio lands inside 0.80–1.91 for the feed, or is exactly 0.5625 for full-screen video.
- For 9:16 designs, keep text away from the edges — Instagram’s interface covers a surprising amount of the frame. The safe zone checker overlays the buttons, caption strip and progress bars so you can see what survives.
- Post one test and look at it on a real phone. Nothing replaces this step.
Get the pixels right and the rest of the work — the caption, the timing, the idea — actually gets a fair hearing.
What is the best Instagram image size in 2026?
1080 × 1350 px (4:5) for feed posts, because it is the tallest ratio the feed accepts and therefore fills the most of a phone screen. 1080 × 1920 px (9:16) for Reels and Stories. 1080 × 1080 px (1:1) when you want something that behaves predictably everywhere.
Does Instagram still crop images to square?
No. The feed has accepted a range of ratios for years — anything from 1.91:1 landscape to 4:5 portrait posts without a forced crop. Only files outside that window get trimmed. The profile grid, however, does crop your post to fit its tile.
Why does my image look blurry after posting?
Almost always because it was uploaded at the wrong width and got resampled. Instagram re-encodes uploads, and the further your file is from the target size the more visible the damage. Export at 1080 px wide in sRGB and the difference is usually obvious.
Can I upload images larger than 1080 px wide?
Yes, and Instagram will downscale them. Some people upload at 1440 px or 2160 px hoping for a better result. It is not a documented behaviour and results are inconsistent, so it is worth testing on your own account rather than trusting a blog post either way.
What size should a profile picture be?
1080 × 1080 px, square. It is displayed as a circle, so anything in the corners is cut. Centre the subject and leave breathing room around it — the visible area is smaller than the square you upload.
Do all carousel slides have to be the same size?
Effectively yes. The carousel takes its ratio from the first slide, and later slides are cropped to match. Export every slide at the same pixel dimensions to avoid surprises.