Reference chart
Social Media Image Size Chart
By &Pixels, the studio that builds MyCalculator.to. Sizes are what to export. The last column is what gets cropped, which is the part that ruins posts.
Every surface worth posting to, with the dimensions, the ratio, and what each one crops away once you have uploaded it.
What size should a social image be?
There is no single answer, because the right size follows the surface rather than the platform. A vertical story wants 1080 by 1920, a Pinterest pin wants 1000 by 1500, and a link preview wants 1200 by 630. One asset cannot be all three without being cropped in two of them.
The dimensions are the easy half. What actually ruins a post is the crop: the same square image is perfect in the Instagram feed and loses an eighth off each side in the profile grid. So the last column below is what each surface takes away.
Images
| Placement | Export | Ratio | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram feed, square | 1080 x 1080 | 1:1 | profile grid crops to about 0.76 of the width |
| Instagram feed, portrait | 1080 x 1350 | 4:5 | the tallest the feed allows, so the most screen |
| Instagram / Facebook story | 1080 x 1920 | 9:16 | keep text out of the top 250 and bottom 320 px |
| Pinterest standard pin | 1000 x 1500 | 2:3 | taller than 2:3 gets truncated in the feed |
| Facebook link share | 1200 x 630 | 1.91:1 | the same card Open Graph uses |
| LinkedIn feed image | 1200 x 627 | 1.91:1 | mobile crops the sides slightly |
| X summary large image | 1600 x 900 | 16:9 | rounded corners clip the extreme edges |
| YouTube thumbnail | 1280 x 720 | 16:9 | timestamp sits bottom right |
The calculators behind this
Video
| Placement | Export | Ratio | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reels, TikTok, Shorts | 1080 x 1920 | 9:16 | UI covers roughly the bottom fifth |
| Instagram feed video | 1080 x 1350 | 4:5 | square also works, 16:9 wastes height |
| Pinterest video pin | 1000 x 1500 | 2:3 | first frame is the search thumbnail |
| YouTube standard | 1920 x 1080 | 16:9 | the one surface still built for landscape |
How to size an asset
- Design at the tallest ratio you need. Cropping a 4:5 down to square keeps quality. Stretching a square up to 4:5 does not.
- Keep the message inside the safe area. On a 9:16 story that means clear of the top 250 and bottom 320 pixels, where the chrome sits.
- Export at the listed pixel size, not larger. Every platform re-encodes. Uploading a 4000px image just hands the compressor more to throw away.
- Use PNG for flat colour and type, JPEG for photographs. Pinterest still rejects WebP on upload, so do not reach for it here.
- Check the crop, not just the export. View it in the profile grid and the feed. The two disagree more often than anyone expects.
To work a ratio out for a size that is not in the table, the aspect ratio calculator scales a dimension while keeping the shape. For a link card specifically, the OpenGraph preview shows what a platform will actually render from a page, which is usually the fastest way to find out that the wrong image is set.
Formula & Methodology
Did you know? Pinterest still does not accept WebP on upload, years after every browser started rendering it. Export PNG or JPEG for pins even if WebP is the sensible choice everywhere else on the web.
Sources
- Published creative specifications from each platform for feed, story and link placements
- Open Graph protocol specification, ogp.me, for link preview dimensions
- Platform guidance on safe areas for vertical video surfaces