Social Media Image Sizes 2026: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok & More

Every platform crops, compresses, and displays images differently. Upload the wrong dimensions and you'll get a blurry thumbnail, a profile photo with your face cropped off, or a banner that looks fine on desktop and completely broken on mobile. This guide has the actual numbers for 2026 — not approximations, the dimensions the platforms themselves document.

Instagram

Instagram has more image formats than any other platform, and each one has different rules.

The format that actually matters for reach in 2026: 1080 × 1350px portrait.

It's not about aesthetics — it's about screen real estate. A portrait post takes up significantly more space in the feed than a square, which means someone scrolling has to move their thumb further to get past it. That extra fraction of a second of exposure registers as engagement to the algorithm. If you're posting squares in 2026, you're leaving real reach on the table.

Stories safe zone: The full canvas is 1080 × 1920px, but keep all text and faces between roughly 250px from the top and 250px from the bottom. The profile icon covers the top, and the reply bar covers the bottom. Anything outside that zone risks getting hidden.

Use the Instagram Resizer to handle portrait, square, and Stories crops without the manual math.

YouTube {#youtube}

On thumbnails: 1280 × 720px is the minimum, not the recommendation. If you design at that size and it gets displayed on a 4K monitor or large TV, it'll look noticeably soft. Design at 1920 × 1080px — YouTube will scale it down for smaller screens and it stays sharp at larger sizes.

The timestamp trap: YouTube overlays a timestamp in the bottom-right corner of every thumbnail in the feed. If your key text or the subject's face sits in that corner, it gets partially covered. Keep the important elements in the center-left of the frame.

The 2MB wall: Modern cameras and design tools export files at 5–10MB by default. YouTube won't accept them. Before uploading any thumbnail, compress it to under 2MB — Compress to 2MB handles this in one step.

Channel banner safe zone: The banner displays at wildly different crops depending on device — 2560 × 1440px on TV, a narrow strip on mobile. The only area that's visible everywhere is the central 1546 × 423px. Put your channel name and any critical info inside that zone. Decorative elements can live outside it, but assume they'll be cropped on mobile.

The YouTube Thumbnail Resizer has the safe zones pre-mapped — you can see exactly what gets cut before you upload.

Facebook {#facebook}

Facebook is tricky because it displays the same image differently depending on whether it's viewed on desktop, mobile, or in a shared link preview. These are the dimensions that hold up across all three.

Cover photo gotcha: The cover photo is cropped differently on desktop (851 × 315px) and mobile (640 × 360px). The safe zone where nothing gets cut on either device is roughly the central 640 × 315px area. Don't put your page name or key information near the left and right edges — they'll be cut off on mobile.

Link preview images are pulled from the og:image tag on the linked page. If you're sharing your own website links, make sure your pages have a 1200 × 628px og:image set — otherwise Facebook picks an image randomly and the preview looks broken.

Use the Facebook Image Resizer for feed photos and cover crops.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn's audience is professional, and the image quality expectations match. Blurry or poorly cropped profile photos stand out negatively here more than on any other platform.

Profile photo: Upload at the highest resolution you have — LinkedIn scales it down for display but keeps the original for zoom. The minimum is 400 × 400px, but anything below 800 × 800px will look soft when someone clicks to view your full profile.

Background banner: The 4:1 ratio is very wide and narrow. Most people upload a generic gradient and call it done. If you actually want it to work for you, keep the main message in the central 60% of the width — the edges get cropped on some mobile views.

Feed posts: Landscape (1200 × 627px) outperforms square on LinkedIn because the feed layout favors it. Document-style posts (PDFs formatted as slides) get even more reach than static images, but that's a separate format.

TikTok

TikTok is primarily a video platform, but profile photos and some static image formats matter.

Profile photo: TikTok displays profile photos small and in a circle — keep faces centered and avoid small text or complex backgrounds. A clean, high-contrast photo at 800 × 800px works well even though the minimum is 200 × 200px.

Photo mode: TikTok's photo carousel feature (where you post a series of still images) performs surprisingly well for certain content types. The format is 9:16 vertical — same as Stories. The Instagram Resizer handles this ratio and works for TikTok photo posts too.

Pinterest

Pinterest is an outlier — vertical images consistently outperform square or horizontal ones, often by a significant margin. The platform is effectively built around tall images.

The 2:3 standard (1000 × 1500px) is the format to use by default. Pinterest's feed is a masonry grid — taller images take up more vertical space, which means more visibility per scroll. The platform specifically recommends against going taller than a 1:2.1 ratio (around 2100px at 1000px wide) because they cap the display height and very long images get truncated with a "show more" fold.

Text on Pins: Pinterest users frequently save Pins to reference later, so text overlays that explain the content — "15 Minimalist Living Room Ideas" — tend to get more saves than purely visual images.

Twitter / X

Single image posts: Twitter/X crops images in the feed to a 16:9 preview — the full image only shows when someone clicks. Design with that crop in mind. If your key content is at the very top or bottom of a tall image, it'll be hidden in the feed preview.

Profile photo: Displayed in a circle. Anything in the corners gets cut. Keep faces and logos centered with some breathing room.

GIF limit: The 15MB GIF limit sounds generous until you try to upload an animated GIF from a design tool — they're often 30–50MB. Use Compress to 2MB as a starting point, though GIF compression is lossy and quality drops significantly at very small sizes.

Why Your Images Look Different After Upload

Every platform re-compresses your images when you upload them. You can upload a perfect 1080 × 1080px JPG at 95% quality, and the platform will compress it down further on their end — often to 70–80% quality equivalent. There's no way to stop this.

What you can do is upload a file that survives that re-compression well. Two things help:

Start at the exact dimensions the platform expects. Uploading a larger image forces the platform to both resize and compress. Uploading at the correct dimensions means it only needs to compress. Less processing = less quality loss.

Use JPG instead of PNG for photos. PNG files are much larger and trigger more aggressive compression from the platform. For photographs, JPG at 85–90% quality produces a smaller file that survives platform re-compression better than a PNG at the same visual quality.

The Bulk Image Resizer resizes to exact platform dimensions and keeps everything local — your files never leave your browser.

Quick Reference: All Platforms at a Glance

Dimensions are based on platform documentation as of early 2026. Platforms update their specs occasionally — if something looks off after upload, check the platform's official help center for the latest.