The current recommended image dimensions for Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Threads — feed posts, portraits, stories, covers, thumbnails, and pins — plus why aspect ratio matters more than exact pixels, where safe zones and crops bite, and the 2026 shift to vertical, mobile-first frames.
Three separate numbers hide inside the phrase "image size," and getting them confused is why uploads come back cropped or blurry. The first is dimensions — the pixel width by height, like 1080 × 1350. The second is aspect ratio — the proportion those dimensions describe, like 4:5, which is what the platform actually enforces when it decides whether to display, crop, or letterbox your image. The third is resolution — how many pixels there are overall, which governs sharpness. A picture can have the right dimensions and still look wrong if the ratio does not match the slot, and it can have the right ratio and still look soft if the resolution is too low.
The practical order of operations is: get the [aspect ratio](/glossary/aspect-ratio) right first, then upload at the platform's recommended resolution — almost always 1080 pixels wide or more in 2026. Platforms downscale a correctly-proportioned image cleanly; they crop or pad a wrongly-proportioned one, and that crop is what slices off a head or the bottom line of text. The numbers below are the current recommended dimensions per Buffer's 2026 guide, cross-checked against the platforms' own specs, but the ratio is the thing to internalize. The exact pixel count is a detail; the proportion is the rule.
Before the per-platform breakdown, three defaults cover most of what you post. Upload at a minimum of 1080 pixels on the short edge — anything smaller gets upscaled and softened by the app. For feed posts, 1080 × 1350 (4:5 portrait) is the single strongest all-round size: it fills more of a phone screen than a square, is accepted across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X, and downscales to a 1080 × 1080 square anywhere portrait is not supported. For full-screen vertical — Stories, Reels, TikTok, Shorts — the size is 1080 × 1920 ([9:16](/glossary/9-16-video)). If you only ever make two sizes, make a 4:5 and a 9:16.
On format: JPG and PNG are the safest universal choices — JPG for photographs, PNG for graphics with text or transparency. Most major networks now accept WebP, but JPG remains the reliable fallback. Whatever you pick, export at the target resolution rather than uploading an oversized file and letting the platform's compressor mangle it.
Instagram is a 1080-pixel-wide platform across the board. Feed posts are 1080 × 1350 for portrait ([4:5](/glossary/4-5-video)), 1080 × 1080 for square ([1:1](/glossary/1-1-video)), and Stories and Reels are 1080 × 1920 (9:16). Portrait 4:5 generally beats square in the feed because it claims more vertical real estate on a phone, which is the direction Instagram's own display has trended. Carousels follow the same feed sizes — pick one ratio (usually 4:5) and hold it across every slide so the set does not jump between shapes as people swipe. The profile photo displays as a small circle, so upload at least 320 × 320 and keep the subject centered inside the circular crop.
Facebook shares Instagram's feed sizing: 1080 × 1080 square, 1080 × 1350 vertical, and 1200 × 630 for a horizontal shared image or link preview. Stories are 1080 × 1920. The place Facebook diverges is cover photos, which are their own awkward shape and crop differently across surfaces. A profile or page cover is 851 × 315 pixels; a group cover is 1640 × 856; an event cover is 1920 × 1005. Because Facebook crops the sides of a cover on mobile and the top and bottom on desktop, keep any logo or text centered and away from the edges. The profile photo is 320 × 320, cropped to a circle over the cover.
On X, square (1:1) and landscape ([16:9](/glossary/16-9-video)) images display most reliably in-stream. In-stream sizes are 1080 × 1080 square, 1080 × 1350 vertical, and 1600 × 900 horizontal; a shared link card renders around 1200 × 628. The header (cover) is 1500 × 500 pixels — a wide 3:1 strip — and the profile photo is 400 × 400, shown as a circle. The header is the piece most often gotten wrong: its extreme width means anything important placed near the top, bottom, or far edges gets clipped by the profile-photo overlay and the timeline chrome, so keep the focal content in the middle band.
For LinkedIn feed posts, the safe defaults are a 1080 × 1080 square and a 1080 × 1350 portrait, with a 1200 × 627 image for link previews — the same B2B-friendly sizes that work on the other feeds. The covers are LinkedIn-specific and easy to mix up: a personal profile background is 1584 × 396 pixels (4:1), while a company page cover is a much shorter 1128 × 191. Both are wide, low strips where a mobile crop and the profile-photo overlay eat the left side, so weight the design to the right and center. Profile and logo images are 400 × 400.
YouTube has two image assets that get confused. The [thumbnail](/glossary/thumbnail) — the clickable image on a video — is 1280 × 720 pixels (16:9), with a 640-pixel minimum width and a 2MB file cap. Channel art (the banner) is a single large 2560 × 1440 image that YouTube crops differently for TV, desktop, tablet, and phone; the part guaranteed to show on every device is a central 1546 × 423 "safe area," so your channel name and any key graphics have to live inside that box or they vanish on smaller screens. The channel profile photo is 800 × 800, displayed as a circle.
TikTok is a fully [vertical](/glossary/vertical-video) platform: every video, photo-carousel image, and ad should fill the 9:16 frame at 1080 × 1920, though photo posts also accept 4:5. Keep captions, watermarks, and any CTA out of the very top and bottom edges, where TikTok's own interface — handle, caption, and the right-rail buttons — overlays the frame. The profile photo is small, so upload at least 200 × 200 and center the subject.
Pinterest is the outlier that rewards taller images. The standard pin is 1000 × 1500 pixels — a 2:3 ratio — and taller pins occupy more of the vertical feed and tend to get seen more. Pinterest will truncate pins that run much longer than 2:3, so 1000 × 1500 is the reliable target rather than an endless infographic. The profile photo is small and circular; upload at least 165 × 165.
Threads inherits Instagram's handling — upload at 1080 pixels wide and a 4:5 portrait or 1:1 square displays cleanly, which is why a single Instagram-shaped asset generally carries over. That points at the actual problem most creators have: they are not posting to one platform, they are posting the same idea to eight or nine, and every one of them has a slightly different feed ratio, cover shape, and safe zone. A square that looks fine on X gets out-competed by a 4:5 on Instagram; a cover sized for a LinkedIn company page is the wrong shape for a personal profile; a thumbnail built for YouTube is useless as a Pinterest pin. The [cross-posting](/how-to/cross-post-to-all-platforms) tax is real, and it is mostly a resizing tax.
Two habits prevent almost every image-size mistake. First, design to the ratio, not the pixel count. There are really only five ratios in play — 1:1, 4:5, 9:16, 16:9, and 2:3 — and if you build to the right one, uploading at 1080 pixels wide (or 1280 for a 16:9 thumbnail) handles the resolution automatically. Chasing a platform's exact recommended pixel dimensions matters far less than nailing the proportion, because the platform downscales a right-shaped image and crops a wrong-shaped one.
Second, respect safe zones. Stories, Reels, and TikTok all overlay interface elements — handles, captions, buttons, the progress bar — across roughly the top and bottom 15% of a 9:16 frame, so keep text and faces in the central band. Covers and headers crop differently on mobile versus desktop, so keep logos and words centered and off the edges. The 2026 direction reinforces this: vertical, mobile-first ratios (4:5 and 9:16) now tend to outperform square on most networks, because they own more of a phone screen. When in doubt, go taller and keep the important content in the middle.
Knowing that an Instagram portrait is 1080 × 1350 and a YouTube thumbnail is 1280 × 720 is the easy part — this page just handed you the whole table. The work is producing every asset at the right size for every destination, every time you post. A single idea that goes to Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and Threads needs a 4:5 feed image, a 9:16 vertical, a 16:9 landscape, a 2:3 pin, and platform-correct crops for each — from one concept. Do that by hand in a design tool and it is an hour of exporting and re-cropping per post; do it wrong and the platform crops off your headline or upscales a soft image.
[Kompozy](/) removes the resizing step by generating each output natively at its destination's dimensions instead of resizing one master afterward. When it produces an image or video — [Photo Posts](/glossary/output-buckets), Carousel Posts, Quote Graphics, Persona Photos, Infographics, [Persona Shorts](/glossary/persona-shorts), Clipped Shorts, and the rest of the [18 formats](/glossary/output-buckets) — it renders straight to the correct aspect ratio for the platform it is bound to, with brand-exact layout handled by [HyperFrames](/glossary/hyperframes) so text and logos land inside the safe zones rather than getting cropped. A carousel comes out at a consistent 4:5 across every slide; a vertical short fills 9:16 with captions kept clear of the interface overlays; a thumbnail lands at 16:9. Because the engine knows each platform's frame, one idea fans out to the nine supported platforms already sized correctly for each, and [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) schedules the set without a manual export-and-crop pass in between. For video specifically, the companion how-to on [resizing video for Instagram](/how-to/resize-video-for-instagram) walks the manual version of what the engine automates. The point of this page is the numbers; the point of an engine is never having to hit them by hand again.
A 1080 × 1350 pixel image (4:5 portrait) is the strongest single default. It fills more of a mobile screen than a square, is accepted across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X feeds, and downscales cleanly to a 1080 × 1080 square where portrait is not supported. If you only make one size, make it 4:5 at 1080 pixels wide.
Upload at 1080 pixels wide. Use 1080 × 1350 (4:5) for portrait feed posts, 1080 × 1080 (1:1) for square, and 1080 × 1920 (9:16) for Stories and Reels. Portrait 4:5 generally outperforms square because it takes up more vertical space in the feed.
A YouTube thumbnail is 1280 × 720 pixels (16:9), with a 640-pixel minimum width and a file under 2MB. That is separate from channel art, which is 2560 × 1440 pixels with a central 1546 × 423 safe area that stays visible across TV, desktop, and mobile.
Yes. Platforms downscale a correctly-proportioned image cleanly, but they crop or letterbox one with the wrong aspect ratio — which is what cuts off heads and text. Nail the ratio first (1:1, 4:5, 9:16, 16:9, 2:3), then upload at the platform's recommended resolution, typically 1080 pixels wide or more.
JPG and PNG are the safest universal formats — JPG for photos, PNG for graphics with text or transparency. Many networks now accept WebP, but JPG remains the reliable fallback. Whatever the format, upload at the platform's native resolution rather than letting the app compress an oversized file.
The current recommended social media image sizes upload at 1080 pixels wide or more. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X feed posts work best at 1080 × 1350 (4:5 portrait) or 1080 × 1080 (square); Stories, Reels, and TikTok are 1080 × 1920 (9:16); YouTube thumbnails are 1280 × 720 (16:9) and Pinterest pins are 1000 × 1500 (2:3). Aspect ratio matters more than exact pixels — get the ratio right and the platform downscales cleanly instead of cropping.
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