Instagram sizes and dimensions: the complete format guide

Before you shoot or hand a video over to a brand, get the Instagram sizes straight. A file in the wrong aspect ratio gets cropped, loses the text near the edges or arrives over-compressed, and the job comes back for revision. This guide collects the current dimensions for every Instagram format, together with the safe zones and the duration and file size limits.

Where Instagram does not publish an exact figure, we give the safe delivery recommendation: the size that works on any device with no crops and no surprises.

Instagram sizes at a glance

Stories: 1080 × 1920 px, 9:16 aspect ratio, up to 60 seconds per segment.

Reels: 1080 × 1920 px, 9:16 aspect ratio, up to 3 minutes inside the app.

Portrait feed post: 1080 × 1350 px, 4:5 aspect ratio. This is the recommended default.

Square post: 1080 × 1080 px, 1:1 aspect ratio.

Landscape post: 1080 × 566 px, 1.91:1 aspect ratio.

Carousel: 1080 × 1350 px on every slide, up to 20 images or videos.

Highlight cover: 1080 × 1920 px, with the icon centred inside a square of roughly 720 × 720 px.

Profile picture: upload 1080 × 1080 px; it is displayed as a circle at 320 × 320 px.

Profile grid thumbnail: 3:4 ratio. Instagram crops the sides of the image.

If you only remember two numbers, remember 1080 × 1920 px for anything vertical and 1080 × 1350 px for anything that goes to the feed. Those two cover most briefs.

Instagram Stories

A story fills the screen vertically: 1080 × 1920 px at a 9:16 ratio. Instagram accepts larger files, but it rescales everything to a maximum width of 1080 px, so delivering in 4K only adds weight and an extra compression pass that makes the image worse.

Each story segment holds up to 60 seconds of video. If you upload a longer file the app splits it automatically into consecutive 60-second segments, and the cut lands where the app decides, not where your edit needs it. If the script runs past a minute, split it yourself before exporting.

The safe zone is what gets ignored most often. Instagram overlays the account name at the top and the reply box, stickers and links at the bottom. Keep the top 250 px and roughly the bottom 340 px clear: that is the top 14% and the bottom 20%, the same guidance Meta applies to its own vertical ads. Text, logo and price all have to fit in the middle band.

Instagram Reels

A Reel shares the story canvas: 1080 × 1920 px at 9:16. The difference is the interface. A Reel shows the caption, the audio track, the account name and the column of like, comment and share buttons, so more of the frame is covered. Keep roughly 250 px clear at the top, between 420 and 450 px at the bottom and around 140 px on the right-hand side.

The standard length inside the app reaches 3 minutes. Instagram accepts longer uploads, up to 20 minutes, but Reels over 3 minutes are not recommended to accounts that do not follow you yet. For brand content it makes no sense to go near that ceiling: most UGC briefs are answered in 15 to 45 seconds.

The cover is uploaded at 1080 × 1920 px too, but it is cropped in two different places: full screen in the Reels tab and as a vertical thumbnail in the profile grid. Centre the key element, because anything pressed against the edges disappears in one of those two views.

Feed posts: square, portrait and landscape

The feed takes three aspect ratios. Portrait, 1080 × 1350 px at 4:5, takes up the most screen space and is the sensible default for almost everything. Square, 1080 × 1080 px at 1:1, is useful when the same asset is reused on other platforms. Landscape, 1080 × 566 px at 1.91:1, uses the least space and performs worst on mobile.

One recent change still causes badly framed deliveries: the profile grid is no longer square and now previews posts in a rectangular 3:4 ratio. An image uploaded at 1080 × 1350 px is cropped to about 1013 × 1350 px in the thumbnail, losing roughly 67 px of width. It is not much, but it is enough to slice a logo sitting against the margin.

Delivery recommendation: export at 1080 × 1350 px and keep faces, logos and text along the central axis of the image.

Instagram carousels

A carousel holds up to 20 images or videos in a single post. The first slide sets the aspect ratio for the whole set: if it opens in 4:5, everything else is fitted to 4:5.

So the delivery rule is simple: export every slide at the same size, 1080 × 1350 px. Mixing a portrait slide with a square one forces Instagram to crop or to pad, and the set looks sloppy as the viewer swipes. Remember as well that only the first slide appears in the profile grid, so that is where the hook belongs.

Highlights: cover and icon

A highlight cover is uploaded like a story: 1080 × 1920 px at 9:16. Instagram does not use the whole image. It crops a circle from the centre and shows it very small on the profile, at roughly 110 px across.

The safe recommendation is to design the icon inside a central square of about 720 × 720 px on the full vertical canvas. You will see 161 × 161 px quoted in a lot of guides: that is an old display size, not the size you should export at.

An icon with thin strokes or with words becomes unreadable at that scale. Simple shapes, strong contrast, no text.

Instagram profile picture

The profile picture is always cropped to a circle. Upload a square file at 1080 × 1080 px; Instagram presents it at 320 × 320 px, and it looks smaller still on a phone.

Centre the face or the brand mark and leave breathing room around it, because the corners are lost to the circular crop. If it is a logo with a wordmark, use the compact version or the symbol alone, never the full lockup.

Video formats, duration and maximum file size

Deliver MP4 or MOV with the H.264 video codec and AAC audio: that is the combination Instagram processes with the least recompression. The file size ceiling is 4 GB per video and 30 MB per image.

Shoot at 30 fps unless the brief asks for slow motion. Instagram supports up to 60 fps, but the visible result is almost identical and the file is twice the size. Export at a width of 1080 px, because delivering a 4K master does not improve the final quality: the platform rescales and recompresses in every case.

Duration summary: a story runs to 60 seconds per segment and a Reel to 3 minutes inside the app. Any video you now publish to the feed becomes a Reel, unless it is part of a carousel.

Common mistakes when delivering content to a brand

The first is delivering one file for everything. A Reel exported at 9:16 will not work as a feed post without reframing, and a square asset leaves empty bars in a story. If the brief asks for story and feed, that is two separate exports.

The second is putting the subtitles where the interface covers them. The shoot is fine, the captions sit at the very bottom, and the brand receives a video with the text buried under the share button. Always work with the safe zones marked on your timeline.

The third is delivering with the editing app watermark, or with another social network's interface visible in the frame. A video carrying another platform's logo cannot be used in paid advertising and almost always means reshooting.

The fourth is delivering only the final file. Most brands also want the clean master with no burnt-in captions, so they can subtitle it in other languages or adapt the message. Ask before you shoot, not after.

The fifth is audio: copyrighted tracks, or music added from the Instagram library inside the video itself. Neither is usable in paid ads. Deliver a clean audio track and let the brand pick the music. If you want to review what each format is expected to do before you shoot, read our guide to types of UGC content.

Deliver content at the right size

Getting the sizes right is not a technical detail. It is the difference between a brief approved first time and a revision round that costs you days. One template per format, with the safe zones marked, saves you that work on every collaboration.

If you work as a creator and want briefs from brands with clear specifications from the start, the next step is to build your profile and your portfolio with these formats already solved. We explain it step by step in our guide on how to become a UGC creator.