Instagram post size
The one to use. It is the tallest shape the feed shows whole.
Cropped in your browser · your image is never uploaded
Post at 1080 × 1350, the 4:5 portrait. It is the tallest shape the feed shows whole, and it is also the shape that survives the profile grid, which now takes a centred 3:4 tile. A 4:5 loses about three percent off each side there; a square loses 12.5.
How to use the instagram post size
Two crops decide the shape, and they no longer agree with the advice most guides still give. The feed accepts anything between 1.91:1 and 4:5 and crops rather than letterboxes whatever is taller, so 1080 × 1350 is the limit of how much scroll height a still can claim.
The profile grid is the second crop, and it stopped being square in January 2025: tiles are 3:4, taken from the centre. That reversed the old rule. A 4:5 portrait gives up about three percent off each side to the tile, while the 1080 × 1080 square — the shape that used to be the safe one — loses 12.5 percent off each side and arrives on the grid as a rectangle. A 1.91:1 landscape fares worst of all, since more than half its width goes. Compose for 4:5 and keep whatever cannot be lost, a face, a logo, a price, inside a centred 3:4 box.
The other Instagram-specific number is 1080. That is roughly the width served, and an upload much larger than it gets downscaled by Instagram’s encoder rather than by yours. Resizing to 1080 wide before uploading takes their downscaler out of the chain, and it is the single change that fixes most complaints about soft-looking posts.
What people use it for
- Choosing between portrait, square and landscape for one photograph
- Keeping a face or a price inside the centred 3:4 grid tile
- Fixing a post that arrives on the grid cut down the sides
- Resizing to 1080 wide before uploading rather than after
- Cropping a 9:16 phone photo down to something the feed shows whole
Questions
1080 × 1350, the 4:5 portrait. It is the tallest shape the feed shows whole and it gives up only about three percent off each side to the grid tile.
No. It changed to a centred 3:4 tile in January 2025, so a square post now loses 12.5 percent off each side there and appears as a rectangle.
It is cropped down to 4:5, not letterboxed. A 9:16 still loses the top and the bottom in the feed.
Resize it to 1080 wide yourself. Above that Instagram’s encoder does the downscale, and it is worse than the one in your editor.
Yes, at 1080 × 566. It takes less than half the feed height of a portrait, and the 3:4 grid tile then cuts more than half its width.