Social media image sizes: the 2026 cheat sheet
Every image size for Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok and YouTube — verified against the platforms this month, drawn to scale, and including the 2026 change most sheets miss: Instagram's grid now previews at 3:4.
Upload the right image at the wrong size and the platform fixes it for you — by cropping the heads off, compressing it to mush, or letting an odd aspect ratio bury it in the feed. Every one of those outcomes was avoidable with a number you can look up in ten seconds.
This is that lookup. Every social media image size below was verified against the platforms in August 2026, and the same table drives our free resizer — so the sheet and the tool cannot drift apart. Jump to your platform, or read the two rules that make most of the sheet unnecessary.
If you only remember two sizes
Use 1080 × 1350 (4:5 portrait) for feed posts and 1080 × 1920 (9:16 vertical) for Stories, Reels, TikTok and Shorts. Those two cover roughly 90% of what a social team publishes: 4:5 takes the most feed space Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn will give an image, and 9:16 is the native shape of every vertical surface.
The three rules that outlive every size change
- Never design below 1080px wide. Platforms shrink large images gracefully and enlarge small ones brutally. Downscaling keeps detail; upscaling invents blur.
- Aspect ratio matters more than pixels. A 4:5 image at 1080 × 1350 and at 2160 × 2700 render identically in the feed. A 4:5 image forced into a 1:1 slot loses 20% of its height — the exact 20% where you put the product.
- Keep text away from the edges. Every surface with an overlay — Stories, Reels, covers, thumbnails — puts interface elements over your pixels. If words sit in the outer tenth of the frame, some surface somewhere is covering them.
Instagram image sizes
| Use | Size (px) | Ratio | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portrait post | 1080 × 1350 | 4:5 | The default choice — most feed space |
| Portrait, grid-safe | 1080 × 1440 | 3:4 | New for 2026 — see below |
| Square post | 1080 × 1080 | 1:1 | Safe everywhere, biggest nowhere |
| Landscape post | 1080 × 566 | 1.91:1 | Smallest in feed — avoid for key visuals |
| Story / Reel | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 | Full-bleed vertical |
| Profile picture | 320 × 320 | 1:1 | Displayed as a circle — centre the subject |
Facebook image sizes
| Use | Size (px) | Ratio | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square post | 1080 × 1080 | 1:1 | Reliable default for feed posts |
| Link post preview | 1200 × 630 | 1.91:1 | The card a shared URL generates |
| Story / Reel | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 | Same asset as Instagram |
| Page cover | 1640 × 856 | — | Renders ~820 × 312 on desktop; keep faces centred — mobile crops the sides |
| Event cover | 1920 × 1005 | 1.91:1 | |
| Profile picture | 320 × 320 | 1:1 |
X (Twitter) image sizes
| Use | Size (px) | Ratio | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post image | 1600 × 900 | 16:9 | Displays uncropped in the timeline |
| Header | 1500 × 500 | 3:1 | Profile picture overlaps the lower left — keep it clear |
| Profile picture | 400 × 400 | 1:1 | Displayed as a circle |
LinkedIn image sizes
| Use | Size (px) | Ratio | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square post | 1080 × 1080 | 1:1 | Portrait 4:5 also renders full-height in feed |
| Link post preview | 1200 × 627 | 1.91:1 | The card a shared URL generates |
| Page cover | 1584 × 396 | 4:1 | Very wide — design as a strip, not a photo |
| Company logo | 300 × 300 | 1:1 |
Pinterest image sizes
| Use | Size (px) | Ratio | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard pin | 1000 × 1500 | 2:3 | Pinterest's own recommendation — use this one |
| Square pin | 1000 × 1000 | 1:1 | Works, earns less screen |
| Long pin | 1000 × 2100 | 1:2.1 | The practical height ceiling before truncation |
TikTok image sizes
| Use | Size (px) | Ratio | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Video cover | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 | The frame people see on your profile grid |
| Profile picture | 200 × 200 | 1:1 |
YouTube image sizes
| Use | Size (px) | Ratio | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thumbnail | 1280 × 720 | 16:9 | Design for legibility at 168px wide — that's how most people meet it |
| Shorts cover | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 | |
| Channel banner | 2560 × 1440 | 16:9 | Only the central 1546 × 423 shows on every device — treat the rest as decoration |
One image, every platform, without opening Photoshop
The sheet above is 27 renders of the same visual. Doing that by hand in an editor is an afternoon; doing it with a purpose-built resizer is one upload. Ours is free, runs entirely in your browser — the image never touches a server — and its presets are generated from the same table this article is.
The detail that matters more than the preset list: where the crop centres. Going from 16:9 to 9:16 discards about two-thirds of the width, and a centre crop happily cuts the subject in half. In our resizer you drag one focal point and every preset re-crops around it at once — the difference between resizing and framing.
The mistakes that make images look bad
- Upscaling a small source. If the original is 800px wide, no setting makes it sharp at 1080. Start from the export, not the screenshot of the export.
- Ignoring the compressor. Every platform recompresses uploads. Fine detail and thin type suffer most — which is why thumbnails with three huge words outperform posters with a paragraph.
- PNG for photographs. A photo as PNG uploads 5–10× heavier, and the platform just converts it anyway. PNG is for graphics with flat colour and text; JPG or WebP for photos.
- Forgetting the second crop. A perfect 4:5 feed post still gets grid-cropped to 3:4 on Instagram and circle-cropped as a thumbnail elsewhere. The frame you upload is never the only frame it lives in.
The short version
- 1
1080 × 1350 for feeds, 1080 × 1920 for vertical — those two sizes cover ~90% of a social calendar.
- 2
Never design below 1080px wide; platforms shrink well and enlarge badly.
- 3
New for 2026: Instagram's grid previews at 3:4, so keep a 4:5 post's critical content inside its central 3:4 — or compose at 1080 × 1440.
- 4
Aspect ratio beats resolution: the right ratio at modest resolution always looks better than the wrong ratio at any resolution.
- 5
Resize by focal point, not by centre — a 16:9 to 9:16 crop discards two-thirds of the width, and it should discard the two-thirds without the subject in it.