Social Media Image Sizes: Documented, or Just Widely Agreed?
Every size guide gives you a table. This one marks which figures the platforms actually publish and which the internet simply agreed on — a distinction that decides how much to trust each number.
Every social media size guide gives you a table. Almost none of them tell you which numbers the platforms actually publish and which ones the internet simply agreed on.
That distinction turns out to matter a great deal. Writing the eighteen articles this page links to meant reading each platform’s own documentation, and the gap between what is documented and what is repeated is wider than we expected.
What the platforms actually publish
Each of these was read from the platform’s own help pages, in a browser, on 21 August 2026. Several help centres are JavaScript-rendered, so a search snippet is not a substitute for opening the page. The one exception is the Facebook group cover, quoted from Google’s crawl of Facebook’s page because it would not render without a login, as its article explains.
| Image | Size | Platform's own wording |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube thumbnail | 3840 × 2160 | Recommended; min width 640 px; 50 MB desktop, 2 MB mobile |
| YouTube Shorts thumbnail | 2160 × 3840 | Recommended; minimum height 640 px |
| YouTube banner | 2560 × 1440 | Recommended; min 2048 × 1152; safe area 1235 × 338 at the minimum; 6 MB |
| YouTube profile picture | renders at 98 × 98 | 15 MB; no animated GIFs; no upload size |
| YouTube Shorts | square or vertical, up to 3 minutes | A shape rule; no resolution published |
| Instagram feed post | 1080 × 566 to 1080 × 1440 | Ratios 1.91:1 to 3:4 |
| Instagram Reel cover | 420 × 654 | Cannot be edited after upload |
| LinkedIn Page cover | 1512 × 256 | Min and recommended are the same |
| LinkedIn logo | 400 × 400 | Minimum 268 × 268 |
| LinkedIn link-post image | 1200 × 627 | 1.91:1; does not apply to image posts, which are padded not cropped |
| Facebook cover | 851 × 315 | sRGB JPG, under 100 KB |
| Facebook profile picture | 320 × 320 | “For best quality”; displays at 176 / 196 / 36 |
| Facebook event cover | 1920 × 1080 | 16:9 “or larger”, on Meta's event ad page |
| Facebook group cover | 1640 × 856 | Recommended; called 1.91:1, actually 1.92:1 |
| X header | 1500 × 500 | Recommended; profile photo 400 × 400; no animated GIFs |
| Pinterest Pin | 1000 × 1500 | 2:3, on the ad specs page; Pin specs page gives safe zones only |
What is convention, not documentation
These figures are universal, sensible and used by every design tool. They are also not, as far as we could find, published by the platform they describe.
| Image | Size | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram Story | 1080 × 1920 | Universal convention |
| Instagram Story safe area | ~1080 × 1420 | Community-measured |
| Instagram Reel | 1080 × 1920 | Universal convention |
| LinkedIn personal banner | 1584 × 396 | Universal; Pages spec covers Pages only |
| Facebook feed post | 1080 × 1350 / 1080 × 1080 | No organic spec published |
| YouTube banner device crops | 2560 / 1855 / 1546 × 423 | Community-measured |
| YouTube Shorts video | 1080 × 1920 | Universal convention |
| TikTok video | 1080 × 1920 | Native 9:16; maximum length is per account via the API |
| Instagram profile picture | 320 × 320 | Instagram publishes nothing; 110 displayed |
| LinkedIn feed image | 1080 × 1080 | No dimension published; LinkedIn pads rather than crops |
Minimum, recommended, and the gap between them
Reading more than a dozen help pages in a row surfaces something no single one of them makes obvious: the platforms are not all answering the same question when they publish a number.
Some publish a floor — the smallest file they will accept. Some publish a target. A few publish both, and the distance between the two can be enormous.
| Image | Smallest accepted | What is recommended |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube thumbnail | 640 px wide | 3840 × 2160 |
| YouTube banner | 2048 × 1152 | 2560 × 1440 |
| LinkedIn logo | 268 × 268 | 400 × 400 |
| LinkedIn Page cover | 1512 × 256 | 1512 × 256 — the same figure |
A YouTube thumbnail 640 pixels wide is accepted, and it is exactly six times narrower than the resolution YouTube recommends on the same page. Someone quoting “the YouTube thumbnail size” from that page could honestly cite either figure and mean something completely different.
LinkedIn is the opposite case. Its Page cover minimum and its recommendation are the same 1512 × 256, which is a much more useful thing to publish: there is nothing to misread and no room to be clever. Instagram does something different again and mostly publishes shapes rather than sizes, giving a range from 1.91:1 to 3:4 instead of a pixel count to hit.
Where the internet gets it wrong
Four cases turned up repeatedly while writing these, and each one is on page one of Google as we publish.
- YouTube thumbnails. Most guides still say 1280 × 720 and 2 MB. YouTube says 3840 × 2160 and 50 MB — and Google’s own AI Overview repeats the old figures. The full story.
- Instagram posts. A page ranking on the first page states the maximum height is 1350. Instagram’s own page says 1440. The arithmetic.
- LinkedIn Page covers. The web offers 1128 × 191, 4200 × 700 and 1536 × 768. LinkedIn says 1512 × 256. Which are actually wrong.
- Instagram Stories. A page at position two calls 1080 × 1920 a 16:9 ratio. It is 9:16. Why that keeps happening.
Ratios matter more than pixels
If you take one thing from this page, take this: platforms enforce shape and negotiate resolution.
Upload something at the wrong pixel count and it is scaled. Upload something at the wrong aspect ratio and it is cropped, and the crop is chosen by an algorithm that does not know which part of your image matters. That is why a post at 1440 × 1800 and one at 1080 × 1350 behave identically — both are 4:5 — while a 2:1 image and a 1.91:1 image do not.
| Ratio | Where it appears |
|---|---|
| 16:9 | YouTube thumbnails and banners, Facebook desktop cover |
| 9:16 | Instagram Stories and Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts |
| 4:5 | Instagram and Facebook portrait feed posts |
| 1:1 | Profile pictures, square feed posts |
| 1.91:1 | Link preview cards almost everywhere |
| 2:3 | Pinterest image Pins |
| 3:1 | X header |
| 4:1 | LinkedIn personal banner |
Almost everything gets cropped twice
The other pattern that emerged across all eighteen articles: a single uploaded image is routinely displayed in more than one shape, and the platforms rarely say so.
- A Facebook cover is 16:9 on desktop and 2.4:1 on mobile — two genuinely different rectangles from one file.
- A YouTube banner shows fully only on television; desktop and mobile take progressively narrower slices.
- An Instagram Reel appears full-height in the Reels feed, cropped in the home feed, and cropped again in the profile grid.
The working rule that falls out of this is simple and applies everywhere: keep anything that must be read near the centre, and treat the edges as decoration.
How to check any of these yourself
Every figure on this page will eventually go out of date, and this page will not always be the first to notice. So here is the method rather than just the answers.
- Go to the platform’s own help centre. Not a design blog, not a template gallery, and not an AI summary — all three of those are quoting each other, which is how a retired figure survives for years.
- Actually open the page. Several of these help centres build their content in the browser, so a search result snippet or a cached copy can show you nothing at all, or something several revisions old.
- Read the verb attached to the number. A floor and a recommendation look identical once someone has copied them into a table.
- Notice whether you were given pixels or a ratio. Platforms that publish ratios are telling you what they enforce; platforms that publish pixels are usually telling you what looks best.
- Write down the date you checked. It is the only thing that will tell you later whether a number has moved or whether you simply stopped paying attention.
That last step is the one everybody skips, and it is the reason the wrong YouTube thumbnail size is still circulating. Nobody who repeated it recorded when they learned it, so nobody had a reason to look again.
Every guide in this series
- YouTube thumbnail size — what changed, and whether your old files still work
- YouTube banner size — one image, four different crops
- Instagram post size — 4:5, 3:4, and the number most guides get wrong
- Instagram Story size — and what the interface covers
- Instagram Reel size — and the cover you cannot redo
- Facebook cover photo size — desktop and mobile disagree
- Facebook post size — the ratios Facebook actually keeps
- LinkedIn banner size — 1584 × 396 for profiles, 1512 × 256 for Pages
- Facebook event cover photo size — which number has a source?
- Twitter header size — what X actually publishes
- YouTube Shorts size — a shape, not a resolution
- YouTube profile picture size — 98 × 98 is not the upload
- TikTok video size — the length limit is not fixed
- LinkedIn post size — the number everyone quotes is the link card
- Instagram profile picture size — nobody publishes one
- Facebook profile picture size — display sizes, and one floor
- Facebook group cover photo size — three covers, one word
- Pinterest Pin size — the specs page has no size on it
Sources
The platform pages the documented figures on this page were read from, with the date each was checked.
- YouTube Help: video thumbnails, read 21 August 2026
- YouTube Help: manage your channel branding (banner and profile picture), read 21 August 2026
- YouTube Help: upload YouTube Shorts, read 21 August 2026
- Instagram Help: image resolution, read 21 August 2026
- Instagram Help: reel size, read 21 August 2026
- LinkedIn Help: image specifications for Pages and Career Pages, read 21 August 2026
- Facebook Help: Page profile picture and cover photo dimensions, read 21 August 2026
- Meta Business Help: recommended minimum image pixel requirements in Ads Manager, read 21 August 2026
- Meta Business Help: best practices for event ads, read 21 August 2026
- Facebook Help: group cover photo, checked via Google’s crawl on 21 August 2026
- X Help: how to customize your profile, read 21 August 2026
- Pinterest Help: review Pin specs, read 21 August 2026
- Pinterest Business Help: product specs for ads, read 21 August 2026
- TikTok for Developers: Query Creator Info, read 21 August 2026
Resizing without losing the subject
Every article in this series ends in the same practical problem: an image you already have, and a frame that is a different shape.
The part that matters is not the resize but the crop — deciding which point the frame keeps before anything is scaled. Squashing distorts faces; a default centre crop cuts through whatever happened not to be in the middle.
Our free image resizer does this in the browser, with no upload to a server and no account. Set any of the dimensions on this page, choose the point the crop should hold onto, and export. Once the image is right, Social Magnum can schedule the post itself to LinkedIn Pages, Facebook, Instagram and the rest alongside 20+ other networks.
The short version
- 1
Some sizes are documented by the platform and some are only convention — the difference matters
- 2
A published number can be a floor or a target, and the gap between them can be sixfold
- 3
Platforms enforce aspect ratio and negotiate resolution, so shape is the real specification
- 4
Most images are cropped into more than one shape, so keep what matters near the centre
- 5
Four widely repeated figures contradict the platforms' own pages, and all four rank on page one