Instagram post sizes and aspect ratios: feed, profile grid, Stories and Reels

Instagram keeps a feed photo’s shape as long as its aspect ratio is between 1.91:1 (wide) and 3:4 (tall), and it sizes photos to 1,080 pixels wide. That makes 1080 x 1440 (3:4), 1080 x 1350 (4:5), 1080 x 1080 (square) and 1080 x 566 (widest landscape) the sizes that post without a crop. Stories and Reels are full-screen 9:16, or 1080 x 1920, and the profile grid shows every post as a 3:4 tile. A photo outside the feed range is cropped, so the fix is to give it an accepted shape before you upload, for example with our Instagram no crop tool.

Instagram sizes at a glance

Checked against Instagram’s and Meta’s own pages in November 2026. Instagram changes its layouts from time to time, so the source for each line is given in the sections below.

Format	Aspect ratio	Size in pixels	Notes
Tall portrait post	3:4	1080 x 1440	Tallest feed shape. Fills a grid tile exactly
Portrait post	4:5	1080 x 1350	Loses a thin strip at the sides in the grid
Square post	1:1	1080 x 1080	Loses a quarter of its width in the grid
Landscape post	1.91:1 at the widest	1080 x 566	16:9 (1080 x 608) also fits
Carousel	One shape for all slides	Same as the shape you pick	Up to 20 photos and videos
Profile grid tile	3:4	A 1080 x 1440 post fills it exactly	Other shapes are trimmed to fill it
Story	9:16	1080 x 1920	Meta recommends 9:16
Reel	9:16 (accepts 1.91:1 to 9:16)	1080 x 1920	At least 720 pixels and 30 frames per second
Reel cover	1:1.55	420 x 654 recommended	The grid shows a 3:4 crop of it
Profile picture	1:1, shown as a circle	No size published	Keep the face in the middle

Feed posts: the 1.91:1 to 3:4 rule

Instagram’s Help Center gives the rule in one paragraph. When you share a photo between 320 and 1,080 pixels wide, Instagram keeps it at its original resolution, as long as the aspect ratio is between 1.91:1 and 3:4. At 1,080 pixels wide, that means a height between 566 and 1,440 pixels. A photo wider than 1,080 pixels is sized down to 1,080, a photo narrower than 320 is enlarged to 320, and a photo whose shape isn’t supported is cropped to fit a supported ratio (Instagram).

Here is what that means for the shapes cameras and phones actually produce:

Your photo	Aspect ratio	At 1,080 px wide	What Instagram does
Upright phone photo	3:4	1080 x 1440	Keeps it whole
Portrait post	4:5	1080 x 1350	Keeps it whole
Square	1:1	1080 x 1080	Keeps it whole
Sideways phone photo	4:3	1080 x 810	Keeps it whole
Camera landscape	3:2	1080 x 720	Keeps it whole
Widescreen	16:9	1080 x 608	Keeps it whole, but it shows short in the feed
Upright camera photo	2:3	1080 x 1620	Crops it: too tall
Screenshot or full-screen photo	9:16	1080 x 1920	Crops it: far too tall
Panorama	Wider than 1.91:1	Under 566 px high	Crops it: too wide

Even cropped to the tallest allowed shape, 3:4, a 2:3 photo loses about 11% of its height and a 9:16 screenshot loses 25%. Those figures are our own arithmetic, since Instagram does not say exactly how it crops.

3:4 is a fairly new limit. For years the tallest feed shape was 4:5, and in May 2025 Instagram said a 3:4 image would now appear exactly as you shot it, in single posts and carousels (Social Media Today). Two routes still stop at 4:5:

• Ads. Meta’s feed image ad specs recommend 4:5 at 1440 x 1800 and accept shapes from 4:5 to 1.91:1 (Meta).
• Scheduling apps. Instagram’s publishing API, which schedulers use, lists JPEG only, a maximum of 8 MB, widths from 320 to 1,440 pixels and shapes from 4:5 to 1.91:1 (Meta for Developers). Post 3:4 photos from the Instagram app, or use 4:5 for a scheduler.

The profile grid shows 3:4 tiles

Your profile no longer shows square thumbnails. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the change from a square grid to taller rectangles in January 2025, saying most photos and videos uploaded to Instagram are now vertical (Engadget, Social Media Today). Neither the announcement nor the Help Center gives the tile shape, so we measured it: on instagram.com in a desktop browser on 9 November 2026, every tile on a public profile was 310.7 x 414.2 pixels, which is exactly 3:4.

Each post fills its tile from the center, so anything that is not 3:4 is trimmed. By our arithmetic, this is how much of each shape stays visible:

Post shape	Post size	Visible in the grid tile
3:4	1080 x 1440	All of it
4:5	1080 x 1350	About 1,013 of 1,080 pixels of width (94%)
1:1	1080 x 1080	810 of 1,080 pixels of width (75%)
1.91:1	1080 x 566	About 425 of 1,080 pixels of width (39%)
9:16 reel	1080 x 1920	1,440 of 1,920 pixels of height (75%)

The trim happens only in the grid. Tap the tile and the post opens in its full shape, because the Help Center rule above still applies to the post itself. If you plan a profile where several posts join into one big picture, cut it into 3:4 tiles: our Instagram grid maker splits one photo into 3, 6, 9 or 12 tiles of 1080 x 1440, numbered in the order you post them.

Stories: full-screen 9:16

Stories are a full-screen vertical format. Meta’s publishing documentation recommends 9:16 for story images and videos to avoid cropping or blank space (Meta for Developers). At the 1,080 pixel width Instagram keeps for photos, that is 1080 x 1920.

Meta’s Story ad specs ask for a bigger file, 1440 x 2560, and suggest keeping roughly the top 14%, the bottom 35% and 6% on each side free of text so it isn’t covered by the profile icon or buttons (Meta). On a 1080 x 1920 story, that is about 270 pixels at the top, 670 at the bottom and 65 at each side. The same margins are a good habit for ordinary stories with text on them.

A 9:16 photo that is too tall for the feed is a natural story. To turn a wide photo into a full-screen story without cutting it, choose Instagram story or Reel (1080 x 1920) under Platform size in our Instagram no crop tool and fill the space with a blur or a color.

Reels: 9:16, with 1.91:1 to 9:16 accepted

Instagram’s Help Center says you can upload a reel with an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 9:16, and that reels should have at least 30 frames per second and a minimum resolution of 720 pixels (Instagram). 9:16 fills the screen, so 1080 x 1920 is the usual size; Meta’s Reels ad specs recommend 1440 x 2560 for ads (Meta). Reels can be up to 20 minutes long, but Instagram says reels over 3 minutes won’t be recommended to new audiences (Instagram).

The cover. Instagram recommends a cover photo of 420 x 654 pixels (a 1:1.55 ratio), and its help page says that at the moment you can’t edit the cover after you’ve uploaded the reel (Instagram). In the 3:4 profile grid, a 420 x 654 cover shows its middle 420 x 560 pixels, and a full 9:16 frame shows its middle 75%. Keep faces and title text near the center so the grid tile does not cut them.

A horizontal video. A 16:9 video is inside the range, so Instagram accepts it, but it fills only part of a phone held upright. To fill the screen without losing the sides, fit it into 9:16 over a blurred copy of itself with our horizontal to vertical video tool. Our guide on turning a horizontal video into a vertical one compares that with cropping and reframing.

Carousels: one shape for every slide

A carousel holds up to 20 photos and videos in one post. Instagram’s Help Center says the orientation you choose (square, portrait or landscape) affects all of the photos or videos, and you can’t select a different orientation for each one. You can drag each item to choose which part sits in the frame (Instagram).

So a carousel that mixes tall and wide shots crops some of them. Two ways around it:

• Pad every photo to the same shape first. Run each photo through the Instagram no crop tool at the same size, for example 4:5 with a blur border, then select them together.
• Spread one panorama across the slides. The Instagram carousel splitter cuts a wide photo into 2 to 20 slides at 4:5, 3:4 or square, 1,080 pixels wide, so the picture joins up as people swipe. Three 4:5 slides need a 3240 x 1350 image.

Profile picture

Instagram’s Help Center explains how to add or change your profile picture (tap Edit profile, then Edit picture or avatar) and notes that it is public to everyone, but it gives no pixel size (Instagram). The picture is shown as a circle, so the corners of a square photo are never seen. Start from a square with the face in the middle. Our DP without crop tool puts a whole photo on a square canvas with a round guide, which works for an Instagram profile picture as well as a WhatsApp one.

Why Instagram crops or shrinks your photo

When a post comes out cropped, soft or smaller than you expected, one of these is usually the reason:

1. The shape is outside 1.91:1 to 3:4. A 9:16 screenshot, a 2:3 camera portrait or a panorama is cropped to fit a supported ratio (Instagram).
2. The editor is set to square. Instagram applies the orientation you choose to the post (Instagram). If the preview shows a square, your photo will be posted as a square.
3. The carousel has mixed shapes. Every slide takes the orientation you chose, so the odd ones out are cropped.
4. It is the grid, not the post. The 3:4 profile tile trims 4:5, square and landscape posts at the sides. Open the post to check whether it is really cropped.
5. The photo was resized. Anything wider than 1,080 pixels is sized down to 1,080, and anything narrower than 320 is enlarged to 320, which can look soft (Instagram).
6. A scheduling app posted it. The publishing API those apps use stops at 4:5 and takes JPEG only (Meta for Developers).

How to post a full photo on Instagram without cropping

If the photo is already between 1.91:1 and 3:4

You don’t need to change the file. When you pick the photo, choose the portrait or landscape shape instead of square and check that the preview shows the whole frame. To adjust the framing in the iPhone app, Instagram’s steps are: tap Edit, then Adjust, pinch to zoom and move the photo to adjust how it fits the frame, then tap Back and Done (Instagram). The Help Center does not name the button that switches the preview between square and the photo’s own shape.

If it is too tall or too wide: add a border

Put the photo on a canvas Instagram accepts and fill the gap. With our Instagram no crop tool:

1. Open the photo. It is placed whole inside a 1080 x 1350 (4:5) frame, and it stays on your device.
2. Keep 4:5, or switch Platform size to the 3:4 tall post (1080 x 1440), square, or Instagram story or Reel. Leave Photo size at 100% so every edge stays in view.
3. Pick a fill: Blur for a soft copy of the photo behind it, or Color for white, black, off-white or a tone matched to the edges.
4. Download it as a JPG and post it from your gallery. The file already has an accepted shape, so Instagram has nothing to crop.

For a 2:3 camera portrait, a 3:4 canvas adds only slim strips at the sides. A 9:16 screenshot on a 3:4 canvas gets wider side borders, so a blur usually looks better than plain white.

If you need another shape

Our aspect ratio changer puts the whole photo on any of ten ratios, from 9:16 to 21:9, or a custom one, and fills the edges with blur, a color or a mirror of the edges. Its Exact size mode has presets for Instagram and other apps. It opens JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF and GIF files and saves a JPG, PNG or WebP.

If you want the scene itself to continue

Instead of a border, you can extend the background. On an iPhone 15 Pro or later with Apple Intelligence on iOS 27, Photos has an Extend tool: open the photo, tap the edit button, tap Tools, then Extend, and pinch or drag the photo to extend the background (Apple). In any browser, our free uncrop tool extends a photo to a new shape with Smart fill, which runs on your device. Our guide on whether you can uncrop a photo explains what extended edges can and cannot recover.

Uploading at the best quality

• Upload at least 1,080 pixels wide, in a supported shape. That is Instagram’s own advice for getting a photo shared at 1,080 pixels, along with using the latest version of the app (Instagram). A bigger file is fine, since Instagram sizes it down.
• Do not enlarge a small photo to reach 1,080. Enlarging spreads the same detail over more pixels. Start from the largest copy you have.
• Turn on Upload at highest quality for reels. In the app, tap your profile picture, tap Menu, then under Your app and media tap Media quality and turn on Upload at highest quality. Instagram documents this on its Reels page and notes that higher-quality reels can take longer to upload (Instagram).
• Keep reels at 720 pixels and 30 frames per second or more. Those are Instagram’s minimums for reels (Instagram), so do not shrink a video below them to save data.
• Fix the shape before you upload. A border that still leaves the photo taller than 3:4 or wider than 1.91:1 gets cropped too, border and all. Our Instagram no crop tool saves at 1,080 pixels wide in an accepted shape, so the file goes up as it is.