Social Media Image Sizes for Every Platform in 2026

Short answer: design for four shapes, not eight. 1080×1920 (9:16) covers Stories, Reels, TikTok and Shorts. 1080×1350 (4:5) covers Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads and X feeds. 1000×1500 (2:3) covers Pinterest. 1280×720 (16:9) covers YouTube thumbnails. Every other number in this social media image sizes reference is a variation on those four.

The rest of this page is the full table, the arithmetic of what a crop actually destroys, and the export settings that survive each platform's re-encoder. Bookmark it. The dimensions below change rarely; the reasoning behind them changes even less.

Pixels are the upload target. Ratios are what the platform will display. Text limits are the hard ceilings, not the point where the caption gets cut off with a "more" link.

Instagram caps hashtags at 30 per post, which is a limit and not a target. X portrait images display uncropped up to 4:5; anything taller gets a centre crop in the timeline. Pinterest truncates Pins taller than 2:3 in the feed, so a 1000×2100 "giraffe" Pin loses its bottom third before anyone taps it.

Profile images and logos

• Instagram profile photo: upload 320×320 or larger, square. Displayed as a circle.
• Facebook page profile: upload 720×720, square. Displayed as a circle and shrunk to a thumbnail in search.
• LinkedIn company logo: 300×300. Page cover: 1128×191.
• X profile: 400×400, circle. Header: 1500×500.
• YouTube channel icon: 800×800, circle.

All five are cropped to a circle at some size. Anything in the corners of a square logo will be cut. If your wordmark only works as a horizontal lockup, make a separate circular mark for avatars and stop fighting it.

It is arithmetic, not taste. A feed is a single column at a fixed width. On a phone, that width is effectively 1080 pixels of image. A 1:1 post gets 1080 rows of screen. A 4:5 post gets 1350 rows for the same width. That is 25% more of the screen occupied, and 25% longer before the next post's header slides into view.

The feed is a column. The only variable you control is how much of it you take.

There is a second reason that is easy to miss. Instagram's profile grid now previews posts as 4:5 portrait tiles rather than squares. A square upload gets re-cropped in the grid, so the composition you approved is not the composition a new visitor sees on your profile. Design at 4:5 and the grid shows what you made.

Do not go taller. 4:5 is Instagram's feed maximum. A 1080×1620 image is not a bolder version of the same idea; it is a 4:5 image with 270 rows removed by a crop you did not choose.

9:16 is a different job, not a taller crop

A 9:16 frame fills the entire screen. Nothing else competes with it, which is the whole point. But 1080×1920 is not 1080×1350 with more sky at the top. The platform's own interface sits on top of your image.

On Instagram Stories and Reels, keep essential content clear of roughly the top 250 pixels and the bottom 420 pixels. On TikTok, the caption block and the action rail eat approximately the bottom 480 pixels and the right 120. Do the subtraction: the reliably visible middle of a 9:16 frame is around 1080×1250. That is barely squarer than 4:5.

Which means the useful design area of a vertical asset and the useful design area of a feed asset are almost the same rectangle. Everything above and below it is atmosphere. Treat it that way and the two masters stop feeling like separate builds.

Take one 1080×1920 vertical master and reshape it for every other placement at the same 1080 width. Here is what survives.

Going from a Reel frame to a Facebook link card throws away 71% of the height. Anything you placed near the top or bottom is not compressed or shrunk. It is gone. This is why a festive campaign that looked finished in vertical arrives on LinkedIn with the offer price missing and the logo half cut.

The strict fix is to nest every essential element inside a centred 1080×566 band, since that band survives every crop in the table. It is also a miserable constraint to design inside. Most teams are better off with a looser version of the same rule: logo, price and any legal line inside the centre band; mood, texture and gradient anywhere.

Three ways to reshape, and when each is right

Photography usually crops well. Anything with a price on it almost never does. If a creative carries "₹499 + 18% GST" or a validity date, budget for a re-layout in at least two shapes rather than pretending one file will hold.

Four files, eight networks. Build the vertical master first, because it is the one with the most room and the strictest safe zone. Derive the feed master from its centre. The Pin and the card are separate builds; a 2:3 Pin wants a text overlay that a 4:5 feed post does not, and a YouTube thumbnail is a different craft entirely.

Every platform re-compresses what you upload. You cannot prevent that. You can decide whether their encoder or yours does the resampling, and the difference is visible on text.

• Export at exactly the target width. Instagram downscales anything wider than 1080, and its resampler is not as kind to fine type as your export dialog.
• Convert to sRGB. A Display P3 or Adobe RGB file will shift, usually towards flat, after upload.
• JPEG at quality 85 to 90 for photography. PNG only for flat graphics with hard edges and type. WebP where the platform accepts it.
• Watch the file ceilings: 5 MB for an image on X, 2 MB for a YouTube thumbnail.
• Keep body type above roughly 30 pixels at 1080 width. Below that, compression artefacts start eating the counters in the letterforms.

First, script height. Devanagari, Tamil, Bengali and Gujarati carry matras and conjuncts above and below the baseline that Latin type does not. A caption block that fits the safe zone in English will overflow it in Hindi at the same point size. Set your longest line in the tallest script you actually publish in, then measure the safe zone. Not the other way round.

Second, the rupee glyph. ₹ is missing from a number of older display and decorative fonts, and the renderer silently substitutes a different face for that one character. On a price-led festive creative this is the one glyph everybody looks at. Check it in every font in your kit before Diwali, not during.

Third, fine print dies first. GST lines, validity dates and "terms apply" sit at the bottom of most Indian offer creatives, which is exactly the region a 16:9 or 1.91:1 crop removes. If the claim is legally required, it belongs in the centre band or in the caption, not in the last 200 pixels.

SocialPower generates the image and the caption together, then schedules and auto-publishes across eight networks. The Brand Brain holds your voice, audience, banned words, hashtag ceiling and claims policy, so a caption written for Instagram does not land on LinkedIn with 28 hashtags attached. Per-network limits are checked before anything goes out: 280 characters on X, 500 on Threads, 2,200 on Instagram, and whatever hashtag cap you set. The list of connected networks shows exactly what publishes automatically today.

Two honest limits. Generated assets are stills, so Reels, Shorts and TikTok still need a video file from you; a video agent is on the roadmap and is not shipping yet. And autonomous mode runs behind a daily post cap and an approval gate that is on by default, so it will not empty a queue into your feed while you are asleep. Plans run from Free at ₹0 to Business at ₹3,999 a month excluding GST, compared side by side on the pricing page.

1. 01Export at the exact target width: 1080 for Instagram, Facebook, Threads, X and TikTok; 1000 for Pinterest; 1280 for a YouTube thumbnail.
2. 02Convert to sRGB.
3. 03JPEG 85 to 90 for photos, PNG for flat graphics with type.
4. 04Check the weight against the ceilings: 5 MB on X, 2 MB for a YouTube thumbnail.
5. 05Pull the logo, the price and any legal line inside the centred safe band before you crop anything.
6. 06Preview the 9:16 version with the interface overlay in place, not as a clean rectangle.
7. 07Set the caption in the tallest script you publish in and confirm it still clears the safe zone.
8. 08Write alt text. X allows 1,000 characters and most platforms allow far less, so put the meaning in the first line.

Run that list once per campaign rather than once per asset. Seven of the eight steps are decisions about the master file, and if the master is right the eight exports are mechanical.