Social media image sizes for 2026

Shape first, pixels second

Every platform resamples what you upload, so the exact pixel count of a file matters less than its proportions. A picture at double the recommended width is simply scaled down; a picture at the wrong shape is cropped, letterboxed or squeezed into the space available. The shapes fall into a few families. Wide link and post images sit around 1.91 to 1. Squares are 1 to 1. Portrait feed images are 4 to 5, and full screen stories and vertical ads are 9 to 16. Covers and banners run from about 2.7 to 1 on Facebook to nearly 6 to 1 on a LinkedIn Page. The X ads specification now lists 4 to 5 at 1440 by 1800 and 2 to 3 at 1080 by 1620 alongside the older square and wide formats.

Posts, covers and ads are three different jobs

A post image is made for one campaign and seen for a day or two in a feed. A cover or banner is set once, seen by everyone who opens the profile, and partly hidden by the profile picture and page furniture laid over it. An ad image comes with its own rules on top of the shape, usually a file size cap and a list of accepted formats. On X, standalone image ads recommend 1200 by 1200 for square and 1200 by 628 for wide, with a 5 MB limit. On LinkedIn, post images should be PNG or JPEG, more than 200 pixels wide and no larger than 3 MB. Those limits catch people out more often than the dimensions do.

Why size lists disagree

Three different numbers get called the size. There is the minimum a platform accepts, the file size it recommends, and the size it actually displays on a given screen. Meta's own help page for a Facebook cover gives the first two: at least 400 by 150 pixels, and 851 by 315 as the file that loads fastest when saved as an sRGB JPG under 100 kilobytes. Older guides quote 820 by 312, which was long given as the desktop display size. Third party lists copy each other, so an outdated figure can circulate for years after a redesign. The fix is to check the platform's own page and note the date, which is why every row in the table above carries its source.

When the exact size is worth the effort

For an everyday post, getting the shape right is enough. Exact sizes earn their effort in three places. The first is anything permanent, such as covers, banners and headers, because they are seen by every visitor for months. The second is paid placements, where a rejected or cropped ad costs money and delivery time. The third is text-heavy graphics like event details or price announcements, where a crop or a blurry resample removes the very information the image exists to carry.

Common mistakes

Using one image everywhere, so a wide post gets its sides cut off as a square and its headline disappears. Putting text near the edges of a cover or banner, where phones trim and profile pictures overlap. Uploading a small image and letting the platform enlarge it, which softens text. Saving a text-heavy graphic as a heavily compressed JPG, which smears letters before the platform compresses it a second time. Designing ad images without reading the file limits, then finding a 7 MB export rejected. And trusting a size list with no date on it. Instagram has its own quirks around feed and story safe areas, which are covered on a separate page rather than repeated here.

The social sizes in the flyer builder

The flyer builder has six social canvases: Instagram Post at 1080 by 1080, Instagram Story at 1080 by 1920, Facebook Post at 1200 by 630, LinkedIn Post at 1200 by 627, Facebook Cover at 820 by 312 and Twitter Header at 1500 by 500, alongside A4 portrait and landscape for print. Each of the 199 designs is authored for every size, with the LinkedIn canvas reusing the Facebook post layout. Canvas size is set per page, and switching sizes swaps in the design's own layout for the new shape, carrying content across by slot. Style changes are stored per size. PNG and JPG exports capture at twice the canvas, so a Facebook Cover leaves at 1640 by 624, comfortably above Meta's minimum, in a shape within 3 percent of its recommended one.

Questions people ask