Social media image sizes in 2026: Instagram, Facebook, X and more

Every app shows images at its own sizes and shapes, and anything else gets cropped, letterboxed or recompressed hard on upload. Posting at the size an app actually shows is the simplest way to keep photos sharp and framed the way you meant. Here are the sizes that matter in 2026, and how to get any photo into them.

The sizes, app by app

Apps change their layouts from time to time, so treat these as a starting point and check an app’s own help pages when something looks off. The shape matters more than the exact pixels: a 2160 × 2700 photo is still 4:5, and the app will scale it to fit.

Instagram

Portrait posts at 1080 × 1350 take up the most room in the feed, which is why most creators use them. Squares (1080 × 1080) still work, and landscape posts show at up to 1.91:1, small enough that they’re rarely worth it. The profile grid now previews posts at 3:4, trimming a little off the sides of portrait posts and more off squares, so keep faces and text away from the edges, or post at 1080 × 1440 to match the grid exactly.

Stories and reels are 1080 × 1920. The app draws its own buttons over the top and bottom, so keep text and faces in the middle three quarters. Every slide of a carousel takes the shape of the first, so crop them all to the same size before you post.

Facebook and LinkedIn

The image that appears when a link is shared comes from the page’s og:image tag, and both networks show it at about 1.91:1. One 1200 × 630 image serves both; LinkedIn’s 1200 × 627 is close enough that the difference is a sliver. Photos posted directly to Facebook follow the same rules as Instagram: 4:5 portrait or square fill the most of the feed.

X, Pinterest and YouTube

On X, a single image is safest at 1600 × 900 (16:9). Pinterest is built for tall pins: 1000 × 1500 (2:3) is the standard, and much taller pins get cut off in the feed. YouTube thumbnails are 1280 × 720; YouTube accepts larger ones, but 1280 × 720 is what most people see.

Getting a photo into these sizes

Most photos are 4:3 or 3:2 straight from the camera or phone, so they rarely match. Resizing to an exact size of another shape leaves three choices: crop to the shape, add bars around the whole photo, or stretch it. For social media, crop almost every time, and move the crop so the subject stays in. Bars are useful when the whole picture must show, like a poster or a product shot, and a white border is a popular look on Instagram. Never stretch faces. Crop vs resize explains the difference in detail.

In Graviton, the common sizes are one tap under Resize: Square, Instagram (1080 × 1350), Story (1080 × 1920) and Facebook (1200 × 630). Picking one crops the photo to its shape from the middle; tap Crop above the image to move the frame. For other sizes, open the lock between Width and Height, type the size, and choose Crop under How to fit. A carousel or a week of posts can go in as one batch: every photo comes out at the same size, and you can open any of them to crop it on its own.

Quality: why posted photos look worse

Every app recompresses what you upload. A 12-megapixel phone photo gets scaled down and squeezed hard; a photo already at the size the app shows gets a lighter touch. So post at the sizes above, as a JPG at quality 85 to 90, and don’t upload a file the app will shrink by three quarters. Avoid saving a photo several times in a row, too: each JPG save loses a little, so crop, resize and compress in one step.

The Instagram resizer starts with all of this set: JPG at quality 90, 1080 × 1350, cropped to 4:5. It runs in your browser, so unposted photos stay on your device. Trying it is free and needs no account; downloading takes a free account with 3 downloads a day.