Every table of social media sizes on the internet is slightly out of date, including this one, because the platforms change them without announcing it. What does not change is the reasoning — and if you understand that, a stale number costs you nothing.
Upload bigger than the display size
The dimensions below are each platform’s recommended upload size, not the size your image is shown at. Those are different numbers, and the gap is deliberate: platforms downscale your upload to fit whatever layout and screen density the viewer has.
Downscaling looks good. Upscaling does not. So uploading at the recommended size and letting the platform shrink it gives a sharper result than uploading at the display size and letting it stretch — which is why an image that looked crisp on your screen can arrive soft in the feed.
Aspect ratio matters more than pixels
If you get one thing right, make it the shape. A platform that receives an image of the wrong aspect ratio will either crop it — usually from the centre, usually through somebody’s face — or letterbox it with bars. Neither is recoverable after the fact.
Pixel dimensions are more forgiving. An image at the right ratio but half the recommended size will look slightly soft; an image at the right size but the wrong ratio will be visibly wrong.
The sizes
| Placement | Upload at | Ratio |
|---|---|---|
| Square post | 1080 × 1080 | 1:1 |
| Portrait post | 1080 × 1350 | 4:5 |
| Landscape post | 1080 × 566 | 1.91:1 |
| Story and Reels | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 |
| Profile picture | 320 × 320 | 1:1 |
X
| Placement | Upload at | Ratio |
|---|---|---|
| Post image | 1600 × 900 | 16:9 |
| Profile header | 1500 × 500 | 3:1 |
| Profile picture | 400 × 400 | 1:1 |
| Placement | Upload at | Ratio |
|---|---|---|
| Post image | 1200 × 627 | 1.91:1 |
| Profile banner | 1584 × 396 | 4:1 |
| Company logo | 300 × 300 | 1:1 |
| Placement | Upload at | Ratio |
|---|---|---|
| Shared link preview | 1200 × 630 | 1.91:1 |
| Page cover | 1640 × 624 | 2.63:1 |
| Profile picture | 320 × 320 | 1:1 |
YouTube
| Placement | Upload at | Ratio |
|---|---|---|
| Thumbnail | 1280 × 720 | 16:9 |
| Channel art | 2560 × 1440 | 16:9 |
| Shorts cover | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 |
TikTok and Pinterest
| Placement | Upload at | Ratio |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok video cover | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 |
| Pinterest standard pin | 1000 × 1500 | 2:3 |
| Pinterest square pin | 1000 × 1000 | 1:1 |
The one that is not a social network
1200 × 630 is the Open Graph size — the image that appears when your page is shared anywhere at all: Slack, WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, Facebook, LinkedIn. It is the single most valuable image size on this list, because it is the one that renders in places you have no other presence.
If you set only one image on a web page, set that one.
Cropping without ruining the picture
The hard part is never the resize, it is the crop. Going from a landscape photograph to a 9:16 story means discarding about two thirds of the frame, and a centre crop — the default everywhere — routinely takes the top off the subject’s head.
- Start from the largest original you have. Every crop throws pixels away; starting small means finishing smaller.
- Shoot or choose with the crop in mind. Leaving space around the subject is what makes one image work in three shapes.
- Anchor the crop deliberately. For anything with a person in it, anchoring to the top almost always beats the centre.
- Check what survives. If a crop keeps less than half the frame, it is usually the wrong source image rather than the wrong crop.
The social media resizer does all of these at once — every size you tick, cropped to fill rather than stretched, with an anchor control and a warning when a crop is discarding most of the picture. It runs in your browser, which for campaign artwork that has not launched is the only sensible arrangement.
When these numbers go stale
They will. Treat the ratios as durable and the pixel counts as a good default, and when a platform hands you an exact spec, use theirs. The resizer takes custom dimensions for exactly that reason.