Instagram Post Size in 2026: Feed, Reels, Carousels and the 3:4 Grid

Use 1080 x 1350 pixels (4:5 portrait) for photos and carousels in the feed, and 1080 x 1920 pixels (9:16) for Reels, TikTok and Stories. Those two sizes cover almost everything. The table lists every shape, including the ones you can use but usually should not.

Instagram changed the profile grid from squares to taller 3:4 tiles in early 2025. Every post and Reel cover is center-cropped to that shape, so what people see in your grid is not always what you uploaded. How much is cut depends on the shape of your file.

A 4:5 photo is wider than a 3:4 tile, so Instagram scales it to fill the tile height and trims the sides. A 9:16 image is taller than a 3:4 tile, so the top and bottom are trimmed instead. A square image is much wider than the tile, so it loses more from the sides than a 4:5 photo does. Reels shared to the feed can also appear cropped to 4:5, which trims about 15% from the top and bottom of a 9:16 frame.

• Keep faces and key text near the middle of the frame.
• Leave about 5% of padding on each side of a 4:5 photo so the trim never touches your subject.
• On a 9:16 cover, keep the title inside the middle three quarters of the height.

A safe zone is the part of the screen where text and faces are not covered by the app. On Reels, TikTok and Stories, the caption, sound label, profile bar and buttons sit over the bottom and right edges.

Neither Instagram nor TikTok publishes one official chart of these zones for ordinary posts. The numbers in circulation come from creator guides and from percentages reported from Meta's Reels ad guidance (14% top, 35% bottom, 6% sides) and TikTok's in-feed ad guidance. They do not match. The bottom margin on Reels is 320 px in some guides and 672 px in the ad percentages. Ad margins can also be stricter than the margins for organic posts.

The practical answer is to plan around two margins. Typical is the smaller end of the published figures. Cautious is the most conservative one. Anything in clear space is safe under both.

If you post the same video or image to Reels, TikTok and your grid, build it once inside a single area. On a 1080 x 1920 master, the overlap of the Reels margins, the TikTok margins, the 4:5 feed crop and the 3:4 grid tile is about 895 x 1315 px with typical margins, starting 65 px from the left and 285 px from the top. With cautious margins it shrinks to about 840 x 963 px, starting 120 px from the left and 285 px from the top.

Use the larger box for decoration and the smaller box for anything that must be read, such as a price, a date or a call to action. Backgrounds and photos can run to the edges. Only text and faces need to stay inside the box.

Carousels follow the 4:5 rule. Instagram uses the first slide to set the shape of the whole carousel, so a carousel that opens with a 4:5 slide shows every slide at 4:5, and a mismatched slide gets cropped to match. A carousel can have up to 20 slides, and 8 to 10 is a practical length for most topics.

Your profile grid shows the first slide, so design that slide to survive a 3:4 crop: a centered subject, about 5% of padding on each side and no text on the outer edge. The Instagram Carousel Maker exports every slide at 1080 x 1350, so the sizing is already right.

The final check is always the app itself, because layouts change with updates and with caption length. This routine catches most problems before they go live.

• Put text and faces inside the universal safe box.
• Load the file into the Safe Zone & Grid Preview tool and look at the Reels, TikTok and grid views.
• Move anything that sits in a red or amber band, or that gets trimmed in the grid.
• Save a draft in Instagram, or post to Only me on TikTok, and view it on your own phone.
• Check again after major app updates.