Instagram Photo Size Guide (2026): Posts, Stories & Profile

Instagram image sizes at a glance

These are the commonly recommended values as of September 2026, taken from current platform guidance. Instagram changes its layouts from time to time — if the app’s upload screen shows something different, trust the app.

Why 1080 pixels wide is the number to remember

Instagram scales images wider than 1080 pixels down to 1080 on upload, so a bigger original doesn’t make a sharper post — it just gives Instagram more to recompress. An image narrower than 1080 gets stretched, which looks softer. Aim for exactly 1080 wide.

Which shape should you choose?

• Portrait, 4:5 takes the most room in the feed, which is why it is the recommended default for photos of people and products.
• Square, 1:1 is the classic. It is safe, and it looks tidy in a grid.
• Landscape, 1.91:1 has the smallest footprint in the feed. Use it when the scene really is wide.

Feed posts accept shapes from wide 1.91:1 landscape up to tall portrait; 3:4 has been supported since the 2025 profile-grid change.

The profile-grid crop

Instagram’s profile grid shows each post as a 3:4 tile. Tall portraits fill it naturally, while a square post is trimmed at the left and right edges. Keep the subject — and any text — toward the middle of the picture so it survives both the feed and the grid.

Stories and Reels: mind the safe zone

Stories use a full-screen 9:16 frame at 1080 × 1920. Instagram’s own interface — your name and the reply bar — sits over the top and bottom of the image, so keep text and logos roughly 250 pixels away from those edges.

Getting the file ready, step by step

1. Crop to the shape you want in the crop tool. For a 4:5 portrait, choose a custom ratio of 4 : 5; for a Story, choose the Story ratio.
2. Resize to the exact pixels. Open the Instagram post page for 1080 × 1350, or the Story page for 1080 × 1920.
3. Check the result with the before/after slider — look at faces and text.
4. Download as JPG and upload it from your phone or computer.

Format and quality tips

• Use JPG for photos and PNG only for graphics with flat colour or text.
• Keep your colours in sRGB, which is what most phones and screens already use.
• Don’t crush the file first. Instagram recompresses everything, so a heavily compressed upload gets compressed twice. A clean, moderately compressed file at 1080 pixels wide is plenty.

Common mistakes

• Uploading a 4000-pixel original and wondering why it looks soft — it was scaled down and recompressed.
• Putting text or a logo at the very edge of a Story, where the interface covers it.
• Ignoring the grid crop, so the subject of a square post is clipped in the profile view.
• Dragging a landscape photo to fill a portrait frame, which stretches it. Crop it instead.

Frequently asked questions