Social Media Image Size Cheatsheet
Image dimensions and aspect ratios for Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and X in one searchable reference.
Why the right image size matters
Every social platform crops, compresses and re-renders images to fit its interface. Upload at the wrong dimensions and your headline gets cropped, your logo gets cut off, your call to action slips out of view, or the platform downsamples the image into a blurry mess. Across thousands of impressions, that costs you clicks, especially for busy creative viewed on a phone. Designing to each platform's native dimensions fixes the problem at no extra cost.
Three aspect ratios cover most of modern social
If you only design for three ratios, pick these: 1:1 (square, the universal feed format), 4:5 (portrait, the feed format that takes up the most screen on Instagram and LinkedIn) and 9:16 (vertical full screen for stories, reels, Shorts and TikTok). With those three you can repurpose almost any creative across the major platforms with little extra work.
Mobile safe zones: the detail most designers miss
Platforms lay their own interface over your image: captions, like buttons, profile names and share icons. On most phones the bottom 250 to 350 pixels of a 9:16 story or reel is partly covered. Keep your headline, logo and call to action in the central 80% of the canvas. The notes column above flags safe zones for the formats where they matter most.
Frequently asked questions
Do these dimensions change often?
Less than people think. The major aspect ratios have been stable for years. What changes are smaller pixel details, such as Instagram's shift from 1080 × 1080 to 1080 × 1350 as the preferred feed size, driven by redesigns and screen density.
Should I export at 2x resolution for retina displays?
The sizes listed already account for high-density screens. They are the upload sizes the platforms recommend. Going larger does not help, because the platform downsamples anyway and may add compression artifacts.
JPG or PNG?
Use JPG for photographs and PNG for graphics with text or hard edges. WebP is widely supported and usually gives smaller files at the same quality, though some platforms still convert it on upload.