Instagram Post Size Guide: Dimensions for Photos & Carousels

The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Post Sizes: Dimensions, Ratios, and Best Practices

Whether you are building a brand, sharing photography, or curating your personal feed, understanding Instagram’s image and video dimensions is essential. Blurry photos, awkwardly cropped profile previews, and cut-off text can instantly ruin an otherwise great post.

To keep your content looking crisp, professional, and eye-catching, here is the complete breakdown of Instagram post sizes and aspect ratios.

1. Instagram Feed Posts

The feed is where your main aesthetic lives. While Instagram supports a few different shapes for feed posts, vertical formats rule the screen because they take up more physical space on a phone.

• Tall Portrait (3:4): 1080 × 1440 pixels
  • Why use it: This format aligns seamlessly with Instagram’s profile grid previews, meaning fewer surprise crops when people visit your page. It maximizes vertical space.
• Classic Portrait (4:5): 1080 × 1350 pixels
  • Why use it: The long-standing gold standard for portrait posts. It is widely supported across scheduling tools and third-party apps, making it a reliable choice for creators and brands.
• Square (1:1): 1080 × 1080 pixels
  • Why use it: The classic Instagram look. While it doesn’t take up as much vertical room as portrait sizes, it provides a clean, symmetrical grid layout that works well for product catalogs or grid-art puzzles.
• Landscape / Horizontal (1.91:1): 1080 × 566 pixels
  • Why use it: Best for cinematic landscape photos. However, use it sparingly—it has the smallest footprint in the feed and leaves plenty of blank space above and below your image.

2. Full-Screen Vertical Content: Stories & Reels

Immersive, full-screen video and graphics dominate modern social media consumption. Both Stories and Reels use the same vertical canvas.

• Dimensions: 1080 × 1920 pixels (9:16 aspect ratio)
• Pro-Tip for Safe Zones: Instagram overlays app features like your username, interactive buttons, captions, and like buttons over the top and bottom of Stories and Reels.
  • Keep your core text and faces centered.
  • As a general rule, avoid placing critical text or graphics in the top 15% and bottom 20% of your frame so they don’t get blocked by UI elements.

3. Carousels

Carousels (multi-image posts) are fantastic for storytelling, tutorials, and photo dumps.

• The Golden Rule: Whichever aspect ratio you choose for your first slide (