Instagram Image Sizes and Aspect Ratios for Every Post Type

Post a tall phone photo to Instagram and the app trims it. Post a wide panorama and it shrinks to a thin strip. Both come down to the Instagram aspect ratio rules, which differ for feed posts, Stories, Reels and profile photos. Here are the sizes Instagram and Meta state on their own help pages (checked October 31, 2026), and the pixel sizes that follow.

Quick answer: Make feed photos 1080 pixels wide. Instagram keeps ratios from 1.91:1 to 3:4, so the height can be 566 (landscape), 1080 (square), 1350 (4:5) or 1440 (3:4) pixels. Stories and Reels are 9:16, or 1080 x 1920. Carousels hold up to 20 items in one shape. Instagram publishes no profile picture size; use a square.

Instagram image sizes at a glance

The 1080 x 1920 Reel size is simply 9:16 at full width; Instagram’s Reels page gives only the range and the 720-pixel minimum. The Story row comes from Meta’s ad specs, since Instagram’s help center has no page on Story dimensions.

Instagram aspect ratio for feed posts

Instagram’s page on image resolution has the rules that matter. Photos wider than 1080 pixels are scaled down to 1080. Photos narrower than 320 pixels are enlarged to 320. Anything in between keeps its resolution, as long as the aspect ratio falls between 1.91:1 and 3:4, which works out to a height of 566 to 1440 pixels at 1080 wide. If the ratio is outside that range, Instagram crops the photo.

One catch: other copies of that help text, including Instagram’s own posting FAQ, still give 4:5 as the portrait limit (a height of up to 1350 pixels). So which is it? The main article now says 3:4. If you don’t want to bet on it, 1080 x 1350 fits under both versions. Meta’s ad specs also stick with 4:5: its carousel ad requirements list 1:1 or 4:5 for Instagram Feed, with 1080 x 1350 recommended, JPG or PNG, and a 30 MB file limit.

Why go portrait at all? A 1080 x 1350 photo is 25% taller on screen than a square at the same width, and a 1080 x 1440 one is a third taller. Landscape goes the other way. At 1.91:1, a photo uses only about half the height of a square, which is why wide shots look small in the feed.

The profile grid

When Instagram added portrait and landscape posts in 2015, its announcement said they’d show on your profile grid as a center-cropped square. Third-party sites report that the grid switched to taller 3:4 tiles in 2025. I couldn’t find that on Instagram’s own pages, so check your profile to see which you get.

Either way, keep faces and text in the middle of the frame. On a 1080 x 1440 photo, a square crop removes 180 pixels from the top and 180 from the bottom. A 3:4 tile cut from a 1080 x 1350 photo would lose about 34 pixels from each side. Nothing important should sit in those strips.

Carousels

Instagram’s help page on posts with multiple photos says you can share up to 20 photos and videos in one post. The shape you pick, square, portrait or landscape, applies to every item. You can drag each photo to reposition it in the frame, but one slide can’t be portrait while the next is square. Crop all slides to one ratio before uploading and you decide what each one loses. Some older help pages still say 10.

Stories and Reels: 9:16

Stories and Reels fill a phone screen, so the ratio to aim for is 9:16. Instagram’s Reels size page allows anything from 1.91:1 to 9:16, at 30 frames per second or more and at least 720 pixels. The same page recommends a 420 x 654 pixel cover photo.

For Stories, the clearest numbers come from Meta’s design requirements for Instagram Stories ads: 9:16, 1080 x 1920 recommended, 600 x 1067 minimum. Meta’s newer Stories ad guide lists 1440 x 2560, which is the same 9:16 shape at a higher resolution. That guide also suggests leaving about 14% at the top and 20% at the bottom free of text and logos. On a 1080 x 1920 Story, that’s roughly the top 270 pixels and the bottom 384.

Profile picture

Instagram doesn’t publish a profile picture size; its help page on changing your profile picture only covers the steps. The photo shows as a small circle, so use a square image with the face centered. For comparison, Facebook does give a number for Page profile pictures: 320 x 320 pixels, also cropped to a circle. ResizeAny’s Instagram profile picture preset uses that size. The same circle problem comes up on WhatsApp, and the WhatsApp profile photo guide has the math for fitting a whole photo inside one.

How to resize a photo for Instagram with ResizeAny

ResizeAny runs in your browser and doesn’t upload your photos. Its crop tool has 1:1, 4:5, 3:4 and 9:16 ratios built in. There’s no 1.91:1 button, so for landscape use the freeform crop and draw a wide box.

1. Open the preset for your format: square post, 1080 x 1350 portrait, 1080 x 1440 portrait, 1080 x 566 landscape or Story.
2. Add your photo, click Crop and pick the matching ratio. Move the frame so the subject sits near the middle.
3. Apply the crop. The width and height fields switch to the cropped size, so type 1080 into the width again. With the aspect ratio lock on, the height follows the crop; with it off, type the height too.
4. Download and post.

Don’t skip the crop. The square post and Story presets have the aspect ratio lock turned off, so a 4:3 photo resized straight to 1080 x 1920 comes out stretched instead of trimmed. On the landscape preset, if the height comes out under 566, your crop was wider than 1.91:1 and Instagram will trim it. Redo it a little taller.

For a carousel, bulk image resize handles up to 100 photos at a time. The full set of platform sizes is in the social media presets.