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Social media image sizes

Each network publishes the sizes it wants, and resizes whatever does not fit. Here are the sizes from their own help pages, and what a photo becomes at each one.

Reviewed by Victor Yuki Matusita on . First published . First version, with the measurements of November 2, 2026. The help pages were read on the date given with each source.

Every social network takes a photo, fits it to its own frame and compresses it again. If the photo is far bigger than the frame, the network throws pixels away with its own settings. If it has the wrong shape, the network crops it where it chooses. Uploading a photo that already has the right size and shape keeps those decisions in your hands.

The sizes below come only from each network’s own help or developer pages, read on the date at the bottom of this page. Where a network publishes a figure only for ads, the table says so. TikTok is not in the table: its help pages we read give no size for photos.

Resize your photos here

Choose By size, type the width and the height of the size you need, and drop your photos. Each one fits inside that box, keeps its proportions and stays in this browser tab.

Drop images here

or paste with Ctrl V · JPG, PNG or WebPJPG, PNG or WebP, as many as you like

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Each image fits inside this box and keeps its proportions.

Open the Resize image tool

What the networks ask for

Instagram is precise about shape. Its help center says photos keep their size when they are between 320 and 1080 pixels wide, are made smaller above that, and keep their full frame when the shape is between 1.91:1 and 3:4. A taller or wider photo gets cropped. LinkedIn recommends a width of 1080 pixels for photos in posts, Facebook gives exact sizes for a Page’s profile picture and cover, and X gives them for the profile photo and the header.

The table under "What we measured" lists each size with the network and the use, and the largest file our photos made at that size. The limits in the last column are the heaviest file each page allows, where it gives one.

Fit inside, or fill the frame

Resize image keeps the proportions of the photo. A photo goes inside the box you type, as large as it can, and never gets stretched. Our portrait photo has the same shape as the tallest Instagram frame, so it came out at exactly 1,080 × 1,440. A landscape photo in the same box came out at 1,080 × 810, because it is wider than it is tall.

That is why only one of our 36 resized photos came out at the exact size the network names. For a Facebook cover, a landscape photo came out at 420 × 315: it fits, but it does not fill the wide frame, and the network fills or crops the rest.

To fill a frame exactly, crop first, then resize. Crop image has a square, a portrait and a wide frame ready, and a free box for any other shape. Resize the cropped photo to the size in the table, and the network has nothing left to change.

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The YouTube thumbnail in one step

YouTube’s help page recommends 3840 × 2160 for video thumbnails, with a minimum width of 640 pixels, and suggests the 16:9 shape. Uploaded from the phone app, a thumbnail can weigh up to 2 MB.

The YouTube thumbnail preset does the crop and the resize at once: it cuts the photo to 16:9 around its center and makes it 1,280 × 720, smaller than the recommended size, so the file stays well under the limit of the phone app. All three of our photos came out at that size, and the largest weighed 303 KB.

File size was not the problem for our photos

Resizing to a social media size makes a photo much lighter, because most of its pixels go. Of our resized photos, 24 were for a size with a published limit, and all 24 were under it. The largest file we made weighed 487 KB.

The tightest figure is the Facebook cover: Facebook says it loads fastest when it is under 100 KB. Our largest cover weighed 60.4 KB. If a cover is still too heavy, compress it after resizing.

Before you upload

Profile pictures can be shown in a circle. Facebook, for one, says a Page’s profile picture shows at 176 × 176 on computers and 196 × 196 on smartphones, cropped to a circle, so keep the face in the middle of the square and away from the corners.

Start from the original photo every time and resize it once. A photo resized twice, or taken from a screenshot of another post, has already lost detail the network cannot bring back.

Use JPG for photos and PNG for logos, text and flat colors, which stay sharp in PNG. And check what the photo says about you: the resized copy is written from its pixels, so it leaves the location and the camera details of the original behind.

What we measured

Each size published on the networks’ own pages, the sizes our three phone photos came out at with Resize image, and the largest file at each size. The YouTube thumbnail row gives the size YouTube recommends, and the size the YouTube thumbnail preset made.

Each network size: the network, the use, the official size, the sizes our photos came out at, the largest file and the published limit
NetworkUseOfficial sizeOur photos came outLargest fileLimit
InstagramFeed photo at its tallest ratio, 3:41,080 × 1,4401,080 × 1,440, 1,080 × 810468 KBNot stated
InstagramReel cover photo420 × 654420 × 560, 420 × 31576.7 KBNot stated
FacebookPage profile picture320 × 320240 × 320, 320 × 24036.6 KBNot stated
FacebookPage cover photo, fastest under 100 KB851 × 315236 × 315, 420 × 31560.4 KB100 KB
FacebookImage of a shared link1,200 × 630473 × 630, 840 × 630193 KB8.0 MB
XProfile photo400 × 400300 × 400, 400 × 30050.3 KB2.0 MB
XHeader photo1,500 × 500375 × 500, 667 × 500130 KBNot stated
LinkedInPhoto in a post, recommended width at the tallest ratio, 4:51,080 × 1,3501,012 × 1,350, 1,080 × 810414 KB5.0 MB
LinkedInProfile cover image1,584 × 396297 × 396, 528 × 39689.5 KB8.0 MB
LinkedInPage cover image1,512 × 256192 × 256, 341 × 25640.2 KB3.0 MB
YouTubeChannel banner, smallest upload2,048 × 1,152864 × 1,152, 1,536 × 1,152487 KB6.0 MB
PinterestPin, uploaded from a computer (ad specs)1,000 × 1,5001,000 × 1,333, 1,000 × 750402 KB20.0 MB
YouTubeVideo thumbnail, recommended size, uploaded from the phone app3,840 × 2,1601,280 × 720303 KB2.0 MB

Measured on November 2, 2026 in Chromium 156 and in WebKit 27.2 on Windows, through the Resize image page of this site (By size) and its YouTube thumbnail preset, on our real phone photos, in portrait and in landscape. The table shows Chromium; WebKit wrote slightly larger files at the same sizes.

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