Instagram post size: every dimension for 2025
TL;DR: Instagram feed posts perform best at 1080x1350px (portrait, 4:5 ratio). Stories and Reels both use 1080x1920px. Getting dimensions wrong means cropping, compression, and lower engagement -- and none of that helps the link in your bio convert.
Instagram post sizes at a glance
Portrait feed posts at 1080x1350px consistently outperform square and landscape formats because they take up more screen real estate in the feed. Here are the numbers you actually need, before we get into why they matter and how to use them.
- Feed portrait: 1080x1350px, 4:5 ratio (recommended)
- Feed square: 1080x1080px, 1:1 ratio
- Feed landscape: 1080x566px, 1.91:1 ratio
- Stories: 1080x1920px, 9:16 ratio
- Reels: 1080x1920px, 9:16 ratio
- Carousel: same as feed (1080x1350px portrait recommended)
- Profile photo: 320x320px minimum, displayed at 110x110px on mobile
Instagram compresses any image wider than 1080px and upscales anything under 320px wide. Both outcomes reduce quality. Start at the right dimensions and you skip the compression penalty entirely.
Why getting the size wrong actually hurts you
The wrong Instagram post size does three things, none of them good. It crops out content you meant to keep. It forces Instagram's compression algorithm to do extra work, which degrades sharpness. And on mobile, a poorly sized post looks slightly off in a way most viewers notice without knowing why -- which translates to fewer saves, less engagement, and less traffic to your bio link.
Instagram has two hard limits: the platform scales down anything larger than 1080x1350px and scales up any image under 320px wide. If you upload a 4000x3000px DSLR photo, Instagram shrinks it and resamples the pixels. The output is fine, but it is not the same image you took. If you upload a tiny thumbnail, it gets stretched and it looks terrible.
According to Instagram's own published guidelines, all uploaded images are rendered at a maximum of 1080px wide. This means your 6000px-wide export from Lightroom does not stay at 6000px -- it gets scaled down the moment you hit post.
Portrait is the format that wins on phones. A 4:5 post fills roughly 78% of the screen on a standard iPhone. A square post fills about 58%. More screen means more attention before the viewer scrolls past. That attention matters when the goal is getting someone to tap the link in your bio.
Feed post sizes: portrait beats square for most creators
Portrait format at 1080x1350px is the default choice for anyone trying to maximise feed visibility. Square at 1080x1080px is a solid fallback when the composition does not work vertically. Landscape at 1080x566px is best reserved for panoramas and cinematic content where the wide frame is part of the point, because it gives you the least screen real estate of the three.
A practical note on carousels: you can mix portrait, square, and landscape slides within a single carousel, but it looks cleaner to pick one ratio and stick to it. Instagram will letterbox mismatched slides with white bars, which can look unpolished.
The 4:5 ratio is also the maximum portrait crop Instagram allows. If you try to upload a taller image, say a 9:16 phone screenshot, Instagram will crop it to 4:5 before publishing. Know this before you finalize your design -- anything you place in the top or bottom 15% of a 9:16 image will not appear in the feed post.
Stories and Reels: both use 1080x1920px
Stories and Reels share the same 9:16 vertical format at 1080x1920px (or 1080px wide by 1920px tall). In July 2022, Instagram announced that all new video content would be published as Reels. That consolidation means there is now one video format to learn for short-form content on the platform.
For Stories with interactive elements (polls, stickers, link buttons), keep the central 1080x1350px zone free of important content. The top and bottom 250-300px tend to get covered by the profile header and the CTA tray on mobile. Design for the safe zone and your text stays readable on every device.
Reels follow the same safe-zone logic. The bottom 250px is where Instagram overlays the caption, audio label, and action buttons. If your text or subject lands there, it gets buried. Center your focal point vertically and you avoid the problem.
One technical note on Reels: Instagram recommends H.264 encoding, MP4 container, 30fps, with a bitrate between 3.5 and 5 Mbps for standard HD. Files over 4GB are rejected. Keep your exports under that ceiling and you will have no upload issues.
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How to resize your images without losing quality
You do not need Photoshop to get this right. Free tools like Canva, Squoosh, and GIMP all export at exact pixel dimensions. The goal is to create your image at the correct dimensions before you upload, rather than asking Instagram to resize it after the fact.
The basic workflow for any feed post: create a new canvas at 1080x1350px, drop in your photo or design, export as JPEG at 80-90% quality. For Stories or Reels covers: use 1080x1920px. That covers 95% of use cases.
If you are working from phone photos, most modern smartphones shoot at resolutions well above 1080px. A 12-megapixel camera produces images around 4000x3000px. You have plenty of resolution to crop and resize without losing sharpness. The risk runs the other way: if you start from a screenshot, a thumbnail, or an image you found online, it may already be below 1080px wide. Upscaling those images produces visible blur and pixelation. Start from a high-resolution source whenever possible.
For creators managing profiles at scale, the most time-efficient approach is building templates at the correct dimensions once in Canva or Figma, then dropping in new content per post. The structure stays right every time.
Instagram post sizes and your link in bio strategy
Every Instagram post is, on some level, an advertisement for the link in your bio. The quality and format of your posts determines how much attention you earn in the feed, and that attention is the pipeline from post to profile to click.
Portrait posts get more attention. Reels get more reach. Stories drive the most direct traffic to bio links because the link button sits right on top of the content. But none of that matters if the destination -- your link-in-bio page -- is not worth landing on.
This is where most creators leave real traffic on the table. They spend time getting post dimensions perfect, they nail the lighting, they write a good caption. Then they send their audience to a Linktree page with someone else's branding on it, on someone else's domain, with no SEO value attached to their name. The traffic lands and evaporates.
MyLinks.page puts your profile on a custom domain you own. That means Google can index your page under your brand name, not under linktree.com/username. When someone searches for your name or your business, your link-in-bio page can show up in results. Linktree's free tier does not offer that. Neither does the paid tier, unless you are already paying for their Pro plan and have configured a custom domain yourself.
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Common size mistakes and how to fix them
The most common mistake is uploading a landscape photo when portrait would have worked. If you shot in landscape, crop to 4:5 before uploading. You will likely lose some frame edges, but you gain significantly more feed presence.
The second most common mistake is designing Stories with important elements outside the safe zone. Put text or faces too close to the top or bottom and they disappear under the UI overlay. Keep critical content in the middle 60% of the frame.
A less obvious mistake: uploading images at exactly 1080px wide but at 72 DPI, assuming the DPI setting matters for screens. It does not. Instagram (and every screen) reads pixel dimensions, not DPI. A 1080x1350px image at 72 DPI and the same image at 300 DPI display identically on screen. What matters is the pixel count, not the DPI metadata.
Finally, watch out for images with embedded ICC color profiles in unusual color spaces. Instagram converts everything to sRGB on upload. If your source image is in Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, the colors will shift slightly on Instagram -- usually looking slightly duller or more orange. Export in sRGB and the colors you see on your screen are the colors your audience sees.
Quick reference: Instagram post sizes for 2025
Here is the full reference table, organized by format:
- Feed portrait: 1080 x 1350px, 4:5 ratio, max file size 30MB
- Feed square: 1080 x 1080px, 1:1 ratio, max file size 30MB
- Feed landscape: 1080 x 566px, 1.91:1 ratio, max file size 30MB
- Stories: 1080 x 1920px, 9:16 ratio, safe zone: center 1080x1350px
- Reels: 1080 x 1920px, 9:16 ratio, MP4, H.264, max 4GB
- Reels cover image: 1080 x 1920px (will be cropped to 1:1 in grid)
- Carousel: same as feed, consistent ratio across slides recommended
- Profile photo: minimum 320x320px, displayed at 110x110px
Get the dimensions right, keep the compression out of it, and use the attention you earn from well-formatted posts to drive traffic somewhere worth going. Your bio link is the last mile of that journey -- make sure it leads somewhere that converts.