Instagram Post Sizes and Aspect Ratios

Instagram uploads a photo at up to 1080 pixels wide, and keeps your image untouched only if it is between 320 and 1080 pixels wide with an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 3:4. At 1080 wide, that means a height anywhere from 566 to 1440 pixels. Anything outside that shape gets cropped to fit.

If you want to see how a given image sits in a real post before you publish it, the Instagram post mockup builds the feed card around your own picture.

The sizes worth exporting

1080 pixels is a ceiling, not a target to beat

This is the part that surprises people. Instagram says it sizes a photo down to a width of 1080 pixels if you share something larger. Exporting at 2160 or 4096 wide in the hope of a sharper post does not get you a sharper post — it gets you the same 1080-wide image, resampled by Instagram instead of by you.

It works in the other direction too: share something under 320 pixels wide and Instagram enlarges it to 320. That enlargement is exactly as soft as it sounds, and nothing about the aspect ratio will rescue it.

So the useful rule is narrow: export at exactly 1080 wide, pick your height from the table, and let the height follow the shape you want rather than the other way around.

3:4 is taller than most guides admit

Nearly every size guide stops the portrait range at 4:5 — 1080 × 1350. Instagram's own help page puts the supported range at 1.91:1 to 3:4, which at 1080 wide is a height of 566 to 1440 pixels. 1080 × 1440 is taller than 1080 × 1350 and still inside what Instagram says it accepts.

Taller is not automatically better. A 3:4 image takes more of the screen as someone scrolls, which is the argument for it; it also gets cropped harder in places that show your post as a square or near-square tile, which is the argument against. If you are unsure, 4:5 remains the safe portrait choice, and 3:4 is there when you want the extra height and have checked how it looks cropped.

What gets cropped, and where

An image outside the supported range is cropped on upload to reach a shape Instagram allows. A 9:16 photo — a phone screenshot, most likely — is much taller than 3:4, so posting it to the feed will cut it down rather than fit it in. If you want the whole thing visible, either resize it onto a 1080 × 1350 canvas with padding, or post it somewhere that accepts the taller shape.

Separately, your profile grid shows each post as a tile rather than at its full shape, so the edges of a tall image are not what people see first. Keep the subject away from the top and bottom edges and it will survive both.

Reels and stories are a different spec

Reels accept a wider range than feed photos: 1.91:1 through 9:16, with a minimum resolution of 720 pixels and a minimum frame rate of 30 frames per second. 1080 × 1920 is the full-screen 9:16 shape people mean when they say "vertical video".

Reel cover photos have their own recommended size — 420 × 654, roughly 1:1.55 — and Instagram does not currently let you change a cover after the reel is uploaded, so it is worth getting right the first time.

Where these numbers came from

Everything above is read from Instagram's own help center rather than from other size guides, and checked in September 2026. Meta changes these specifications from time to time, so if a number here disagrees with what the app does, the app is right and this page is stale — tell us and we will re-check it.

Seeing it before you post it

Knowing the numbers is half of it. The other half is looking at the thing: whether the caption crowds the image, whether the crop lands where you think it lands. The Instagram post mockup builds a feed post around your own image so you can see it in context before it goes anywhere.

If it is a phone screenshot you are working with, the source resolution matters as much as the post shape — iPhone screenshot sizes covers what your phone actually writes when you press the buttons.