Best Image Sizes for Social Media Posts
Post the same photo to four platforms and it will look four different ways — cropped, stretched with bars, or quietly softened by compression you did not choose. The fix is simple: size the image yourself, before uploading, using each platform's preferred dimensions. This guide lists the sizes that matter in 2026 and explains the reasoning, so you can adapt when platforms inevitably tweak them again.
The master list
- Instagram square post: 1080 × 1080 px (1:1)
- Instagram portrait post: 1080 × 1350 px (4:5) — the tallest size the feed allows, so it earns the most screen space
- Instagram and Facebook stories: 1080 × 1920 px (9:16)
- Facebook post and link images: 1200 × 630 px (about 1.91:1)
- YouTube thumbnail: 1280 × 720 px (16:9), under 2 MB
- X (Twitter) post image: 1600 × 900 px (16:9) displays cleanly in timelines
Our Resize for Social Media tool contains exactly these presets, so you never need to memorise this list — pick the platform, choose how the photo fits, and download.
Why size matters more than megapixels
Every platform re-processes whatever you upload into its own set of sizes. Upload a 6000 × 4000 px photo and the platform will shrink and re-compress it with generic settings, and fine detail — fabric texture, jewellery, small text — is exactly what generic compression sacrifices. Upload at (or near) the platform's display size and two good things happen: the platform's re-processing has far less to change, and the crop is the one you chose, not an automatic centre-crop that can amputate a head, a product or a price tag.
Fill the frame, or show it all?
When your photo's shape does not match the platform's shape, you have two honest options. Filling (cover) scales the photo until the frame is full and trims the overflow — invisible for most photographs, and the right default. Fitting (contain) shows the entire photo and fills the leftover space with a background colour — the right choice for certificates, screenshots, menus, group photos where nobody can be cropped out, and graphics with text near the edges. Our resizer offers both, with your choice of background colour for the fit mode.
Platform notes worth knowing
Instagram: portrait 4:5 posts occupy noticeably more of the scrolling feed than squares, which is why so many sellers and photographers default to them. For stories, keep text and faces inside the middle band — the top is covered by your profile row and the bottom by reply boxes and buttons. Facebook: link-share images at 1200 × 630 are also what most other sites expect as a default share image, so this size does double duty. YouTube: thumbnails are a special case — design at 1280 × 720, use very large, high-contrast text (three or four words at most), and remember the video-length badge sits over the bottom-right corner. X: images displayed in the timeline are centre-cropped in some views, so keep your subject central within the 1600 × 900 canvas.
Format and file size, briefly
JPG is the safe choice everywhere. WebP is accepted by all four platforms now and is smaller, but a few older apps still stumble on it, so JPG remains the recommendation for anything important. Keep feed images under about 1–2 MB — not because platforms demand it, but because right-sized images naturally land there and upload quickly on mobile data. If your sized image is still huge, run it through the Compress Image tool at 85% quality.
A 60-second routine that always works
- Start from the original photo, never from a version another app already compressed.
- Pick the platform preset and the fill mode (or fit for graphics and documents).
- Glance at the preview: faces whole, text uncut, subject centred.
- Download, then upload that file — and keep the sized copies in a "ready to post" folder so you never redo the work.
Platforms will keep adjusting their exact numbers, but the habit outlives any single list: size deliberately, crop deliberately, and let the platform do as little to your work as possible.