Facebook Aspect Ratios and Image Sizes in 2026: Every Placement, With Sources

For Facebook feed posts in 2026, use 4:5 portrait (1080 x 1350 px) for the most screen space or 1:1 square (1080 x 1080 px) for flexibility. Link previews use about 1.91:1 (1200 x 630 px). Reels and Stories use full-screen 9:16 (1080 x 1920 px). Page covers need a centred design because desktop and mobile crop them differently.

Facebook will accept almost any image and resize it. The trouble is what happens next: covers lose their edges on phones, wide images shrink to a thin strip in the feed, link previews show the wrong picture, and text near the edges of a vertical video disappears under buttons. This guide gives the right Facebook aspect ratio and size for every placement, checked against Meta's own help pages, ad specifications and developer documentation where they exist, and against the major industry size guides where Meta does not publish a number. It then breaks the sizes down by device, by content type, by account type and by industry, gives you a step-by-step export method, and lists the mistakes that cause most sizing problems.

Key findings

• Portrait 4:5 is Meta's own feed recommendation. Meta's Feed image ad spec recommends 1440 x 1800 px at 4:5, with a 3% ratio tolerance and a minimum width of 600 px. For organic posts, 1080 x 1350 px gives the same shape at a smaller file size.
• Page covers are cropped two ways. Facebook's help centre says covers display at 16:9 on computers and 2.4:1 on phones, with a minimum of 400 x 150 px, and that the fastest-loading file is an sRGB JPG at 851 x 315 px under 100 KB.
• Link images are cached by URL. Meta's sharing documentation recommends 1200 x 630 px or larger at about 1.91:1, a maximum of 8 MB, and says a changed image needs a new URL.
• All Facebook video is now Reels. In June 2025 Meta said all videos would be shared as reels, with no length or format restrictions.
• Vertical safe zones are large. Meta's Stories ad spec says to keep text and logos out of roughly the top 14% (250 px) and bottom 20% (340 px) of a 9:16 frame.
• Images beat links in the feed. Buffer's 2026 format study found Facebook images had a median engagement rate of 5.20%, against 4.84% for video, 4.76% for text and 4.43% for links.
• Profile pictures are tiny. Facebook displays them at 176 x 176 px on computers and 196 x 196 px on smartphones, and recommends uploading 320 x 320 px, cropped to a circle.

What's changed for Facebook sizes in 2026

Video is one format: Reels

The biggest sizing change of the past two years is that Facebook stopped treating "videos" and "reels" as separate formats. Meta's June 2025 announcement said that "all videos on Facebook will be shared as reels", that Reels "will also not have any length or format restrictions", and that the Video tab would become the Reels tab. In practice, that means vertical 9:16 is now the default canvas for anything that moves, while landscape and square video still upload and play. Some third-party guides still list a 90-second Reels limit, including Sprout Social's video specs guide; Meta's own announcement is the newer and more authoritative source.

Longer reels carry more of the watch time

In October 2025 Meta reported that time spent watching video on Facebook rose more than 20% year on year in the US, that reels over a minute long make up a quarter of reels from creators with more than 10,000 followers and over half of watch time, and that recommendations now surface 50% more reels published the same day. Longer vertical video means more frames where captions and graphics must stay inside the safe zone.

Ranking explanations were refreshed

Meta's Feed ranking explanation was updated on October 6, 2026, and its Reels ranking explanation on June 19, 2026. Neither names image size as a ranking signal, but both lean on watching and attention: the Feed page lists signals such as time spent on different formats and videos watched for more than 30 seconds, and the Reels page lists predictions such as whether you will watch a reel to completion and how long you will watch. Size affects those indirectly, because a cropped face or unreadable caption gets scrolled past.

Size guides moved to 4:5 and 1440 px

Meta's ad specs now recommend 1440 x 1800 px for 4:5 feed images and 1440 x 2560 px for 9:16 Stories, while the main industry guides, such as Hootsuite's October 2026 size guide, still list 1080 px wide versions for organic posts. Both work. Use 1440 px when the image has fine detail or small text, and 1080 px when file size and upload speed matter more.

Facebook image sizes at a glance

Bookmark this table. Each row names the source behind it, and the sections below explain the crops.

Where sources disagree, the table gives Meta's number first. If you need to convert an image right now, our free Facebook image resizer exports these sizes in your browser, and our aspect ratio glossary entry explains how ratios and pixel sizes relate.

Breakdown 1: by placement

Facebook has four families of placement, and each has its own logic. Learn the logic and you will not need to memorise the numbers.

Feed posts

The feed is a single column of fixed width. A taller image takes more vertical space, so it holds the screen longer as people scroll. That is why 4:5 portrait is the default for photos and designed graphics. Sprout Social's May 2026 guide notes that shared images display at a maximum of 470 px wide in the feed and 504 px wide on a Page, so the 1080 px file is more than twice the display width, which keeps it sharp on high-density phone screens. Square is the flexible choice when one image must also work on Instagram and LinkedIn. Landscape 1.91:1 is the weakest shape on mobile: it uses less than half the height of a 4:5 image at the same width.

Vertical full-screen: Reels and Stories

Both fill the phone screen at 9:16. The difference is how long they last and what covers them. Stories disappear after a day and carry a profile header and progress bar at the top and a reply bar at the bottom. Reels stay on your Page and carry the caption, account name and action buttons along the bottom and right side. Hootsuite's guide passes on Meta's Reels ad advice to keep the top 14%, the bottom 35% and 6% on each side free of key content; the Stories ad spec asks for the top 14% and bottom 20%. Design for the stricter Reels zone and the same file will work in Stories.

Link previews

When you share a URL, Facebook does not use an image you upload: it reads the page's Open Graph tags and builds a card. Meta's sharing documentation recommends at least 1200 x 630 px at about 1.91:1, says images smaller than 600 x 315 px display much smaller, and sets a hard minimum of 200 x 200 px and a maximum of 8 MB. Sprout Social measures the card image at about 479 x 246 px on desktop. If you control the website, this is a web task, not a social media task; our meta tag checker shows what a page's tags say.

Two details from Meta's documentation save a lot of frustration. First, Facebook's crawler has to fetch an image once before it can show it, so the very first person to share a new page may see no image. You can avoid that by running the URL through the Sharing Debugger before you share it, or by adding og:image:width and og:image:height tags so the card can render straight away. Second, images are cached by their URL. If you replace an image but keep the same file name and URL, Facebook keeps showing the old one; upload the new image under a new URL, keep the old file online for posts that already use it, and refresh the page in the Sharing Debugger. Updating the image does not change cards in posts that were already shared.

Page assets: profile picture and cover

These sit at the top of your Page for months, so they deserve the most care. The profile picture is cropped to a circle and shown as small as 36 px on feature phones. The cover is shown at 16:9 on computers and 2.4:1 on phones, both "full-bleed, left-aligned" in Facebook's words, and the profile picture overlaps the cover by about 40 px on mobile. The cover photo help page adds that a cover must be at least 720 px wide and that covers are always public.

Breakdown 2: by device

Most sizing problems come from designing on a laptop and viewing on a phone. Facebook is mostly a phone app for most people: Pew's 2025 survey of 5,022 US adults found 71% use Facebook and about half visit at least daily, many of them several times a day, and those quick visits happen on phones.

Phones

Phone screens are tall, so portrait images win and landscape images shrink. Covers are cropped to 2.4:1, which is very wide and short, and the profile picture overlaps the bottom left. Text must be large enough to read when the image is about the width of a thumb-scroll. Test every new template on a phone before you use it.

Laptops and desktops

The feed column is narrow on desktop too, so a 4:5 image does not look oversized. The cover is shown at 16:9 per the help centre, and Hootsuite measures the desktop display at about 820 x 312 px for the classic 851 x 315 upload. Link cards look larger on desktop than on mobile, which is why a link image that looks fine on a laptop can be unreadable on a phone.

Feature phones and slow connections

Facebook still lists a 36 x 36 px profile picture size for feature phones, and recommends covers under 100 KB for fast loading. If your audience includes people on slow mobile data, compress images before upload; our image compressor keeps quality while cutting file size.

Breakdown 3: by content type

The right ratio depends on what is in the image, not only where it goes.

Photos

Shoot or crop to 4:5. Keep the subject in the middle two-thirds so a square crop elsewhere still works. Export as sRGB JPG; Facebook's help centre names sRGB JPG as the fastest-loading format for covers, and the same holds for feed photos.

Designed graphics with text

Quote cards, announcements and data graphics should be 4:5 or 1:1 and exported as PNG, which Facebook's help centre says may give a better result for images with logos or text. Keep the headline to a few words, and put the detail in the post text, which our Facebook character counter helps you keep tight.

Multi-photo posts and albums

When you post several photos, Facebook arranges them in a grid that depends on the number and shape of the images, and the first image gets the most space. Use one shape throughout for a tidy grid, lead with the strongest image, and remember that every image can still be opened full size. Albums did well in Socialinsider's study of 25 million Facebook posts from 130,683 Pages: in 2025, status posts averaged a 0.20% engagement rate, albums 0.18%, reels 0.18%, single images 0.15% and links 0.05%.

Video and Reels

Film vertically at 1080 x 1920 px. Put captions in the middle band, keep faces out of the bottom third, and choose a cover frame with a clear subject in the centre, because the cover is cropped differently in the grid on your Page. Square or 4:5 video still plays in the feed and can be a sensible compromise when the same clip goes to several networks.

Link posts

The image comes from the website. If you share your own content, set an og:image at 1200 x 630 px with any text well inside the edges. If you share someone else's link and the card looks poor, consider posting a native image with the link in the text instead; links had the lowest median engagement of any Facebook format in Buffer's study.

Engagement rates differ a lot between studies because they use different samples and formulas. Buffer's 2026 engagement report, for example, puts Facebook's median engagement rate at about 5.6% in 2025, up from about 5.0%. Compare formats within one study, not numbers across studies.

Breakdown 4: by account type

Business Pages

Pages need the full set: a 320 x 320 px logo, a cover designed for both crops, 4:5 feed templates, 9:16 Reels templates and, if you run a website, a 1200 x 630 px og:image for each page you share. Our guide to how the Facebook algorithm works explains why consistent posting matters more than any single image.

Personal profiles and creators

Creators who post Reels should treat 9:16 as their main canvas and keep a 4:5 crop of each video's best frame for feed posts. Profile covers must be at least 720 px wide and are always public, so avoid anything personal you would not put on a billboard.

Group admins

Group covers are wide, and the commonly used size is 1640 x 856 px at 1.91:1, according to Adobe Express's Facebook size guide. Keep text centred because the cover appears in invitations and notifications at small sizes. Our guide to Facebook Groups for business covers setting a group up properly.

Advertisers

Ads have the strictest specs. Meta's Feed image ad spec allows a 3% ratio tolerance, JPG or PNG up to 30 MB and a minimum of 600 x 750 px for 4:5; its Stories video spec allows 1 second to 3 minutes, splits anything over 15 seconds into cards, and requires H.264 video with AAC audio at 128 kbps or more. If you plan to boost organic posts, design them to ad specs from the start so they qualify without rework.

Breakdown 5: by industry

The same specs apply to every Page, but the best mix of shapes depends on what you sell. These are starting points to test.

Video specs in detail

Video has more settings than images, and getting them wrong causes upload errors, soft footage or audio problems. Meta publishes detailed specs for ads; organic posts accept the same files, so they make a sound baseline.

Two practical notes. First, export at the frame rate you filmed at; converting 24 fps footage to 30 fps adds judder without adding quality. Second, burn in captions or upload a caption file for any video with speech. Meta's Stories spec calls captions optional but recommended, and many people scroll with the sound off.

Safe zones explained

A safe zone is the part of an image or video that stays visible and uncovered in every place it appears. On Facebook there are three kinds to plan for, and our safe zone glossary entry explains the idea across networks.

• Interface overlays on vertical video. The profile header, progress bar, caption, buttons and reply bar cover the edges of Reels and Stories. Meta's figures are the top 14% and bottom 20% for Stories, and Hootsuite reports Meta's Reels guidance as the top 14%, bottom 35% and 6% on each side.
• Crops on covers. The same cover is shown at 16:9 on computers and 2.4:1 on phones, both left-aligned, so the safe zone is the area the two crops share, minus the corner where the profile picture overlaps.
• Circle crops. Profile pictures lose their corners. Keep the subject inside a circle that touches the edges of the square.

A simple way to apply all three: add guide lines to each template once, mark the zones in a bright colour on a hidden layer, and never place text or logos outside them.

Text on Facebook images: readability rules

Facebook images are often seen small, on a phone, while someone is scrolling quickly. A graphic that looks clear on a 27-inch monitor can be unreadable at 470 px wide.

• Write fewer words. A headline of five to eight words is the practical ceiling. Put the detail in the post text.
• Size type for the phone. A useful test: shrink the image to a third of its size on your screen. If you cannot read the headline, neither can a scroller.
• Use strong contrast. Dark on light or light on dark. Never put text over a busy part of a photo without a solid band behind it.
• Respect margins. Keep text well inside the edges so a different crop does not clip it, and inside the vertical safe zone on Reels and Stories.
• Use one or two typefaces. More looks cluttered at small sizes.
• Repeat the text in alt text. Screen readers cannot read words baked into an image unless you describe them.

Planning a month of Facebook visuals

Sizing mistakes cluster at the moment of posting, when someone is rushing to get something out. The fix is to plan visuals with the calendar rather than separately from it.

1. Map the month by format. Decide how many feed images, albums, Reels and link posts you will publish each week. A simple mix for a small Page is three feed images, one album and two Reels a week, with link posts as needed.
2. Shoot once, crop many. Plan each photo or video session so you get a 4:5 crop, a 1:1 crop and a 9:16 version of the key shots. Leave space around subjects when you shoot so crops have room.
3. Batch the design work. Make all the month's quote cards and graphics in one session from your templates.
4. Name files by ratio and date. "2026-11-04_4x5_autumn-menu.jpg" makes it obvious which file goes where.
5. Schedule as you go. Put each finished asset straight onto the calendar so nothing waits in a folder.

Our guide to the best time to post on Facebook covers when to publish each format once the assets are ready.

How to size any Facebook image: a step-by-step method

1. Pick the placement first. Feed, Reels or Stories, link preview, or Page asset. The placement decides the ratio.
2. Choose the ratio from the table. 4:5 for feed photos and graphics, 1:1 if the same file must work on Instagram and LinkedIn, 9:16 for anything vertical, 1.91:1 for og:images, and the cover rules for covers.
3. Set the canvas at full size. 1080 px wide for organic feed posts, 1440 px when detail or small type matters, 1080 x 1920 px for vertical video.
4. Mark the safe area. For vertical, keep text out of the top 14% and bottom 35%, and 6% in from each side. For covers, keep everything important in the central band that survives both the 16:9 and 2.4:1 crops, and leave the lower left clear for the profile picture.
5. Design big and simple. Five to eight words of text at most, high contrast, no text over busy photo areas.
6. Export in the right format. sRGB JPG for photos, PNG for graphics with text or logos, MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio for video.
7. Check the file size. Covers under 100 KB load fastest; og:images must be under 8 MB; ad images under 30 MB.
8. Preview on a phone and a laptop. Post to a test Page or use a preview tool, and look at the crop on both.
9. Write alt text. Describe the image and include any words in it. Our alt text glossary entry has examples.
10. Save it as a template. Name templates by ratio and purpose ("4x5 quote card", "9x16 tip reel") so anyone on the team can reuse them.

Worked example: one campaign, every Facebook size

Consider a hypothetical bakery, Rye and Crumb, launching an autumn menu. Here is how one photo shoot becomes a full set of Facebook assets.

• Cover: a wide shot of the counter, exported at 1702 x 630 px (twice 851 x 315) with the logo and "Autumn menu from 1 October" in the middle third. They check it on an iPhone and a laptop, and move the text up when the profile picture covers the date on mobile.
• Launch post: a 4:5 photo of the new pumpkin loaf at 1080 x 1350 px, with three words of overlay text in the upper half.
• Album: six 4:5 product photos, strongest first, published the next morning.
• Reel: a 25-second vertical video of the loaf coming out of the oven, captions in the middle band, published on the Friday.
• Link post: the online order page, whose og:image the web designer sets to a 1200 x 630 px photo with no text.
• Event: a tasting evening with a 1920 x 1005 px cover and the date in large type.

All six go on the calendar in one sitting. The numbers are illustrative; the point is that one shoot covers every placement when you plan the crops in advance.

Copy-ready templates

Set these up once in your design tool. The safe areas are conservative so the same file survives crops.

Reusing images across Facebook and other networks

Facebook shares most of its sizes with Instagram, which makes planning simple: 4:5 and 1:1 feed images and 9:16 vertical video work on both. The differences are covers and link previews, which only Facebook uses. Our Instagram aspect ratio guide covers Instagram's taller 3:4 option, and our guide to posting to Instagram and Facebook at the same time shows how to plan both from one draft. For every other network, our social media image sizes guide lists the targets, and the social media image resizer converts one image into many.

Facebook is also a different audience from Instagram. Pew's social media fact sheet shows Facebook used by 80% of US adults aged 30 to 49 and 74% of those aged 50 to 64, older than Instagram's core. That argues for larger type and higher contrast in Facebook graphics than you might use elsewhere.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

1. Logo cut off on mobile covers. The 2.4:1 phone crop removes the top and bottom. Fix: move logos and text into the central band.
2. Profile picture covering cover text. It overlaps about 40 px on mobile. Fix: keep the lower left of the cover clear.
3. Landscape photos in the feed. They shrink to a thin strip on phones. Fix: crop to 4:5.
4. Blurry uploads. Usually an image under 1080 px wide or an unusual colour profile. Fix: export at 1080 px or more in sRGB.
5. Text unreadable on phones. Fix: fewer words and larger type; check at phone width.
6. Wrong link preview image. The og:image is missing, too small or cached. Fix: set a 1200 x 630 px og:image, give a changed image a new URL, and refresh it in Meta's Sharing Debugger.
7. Captions hidden under Reels buttons. Fix: keep text out of the bottom 35% and the right edge.
8. Black bars on vertical video. A landscape clip was uploaded as a reel. Fix: reframe to 9:16 before export.
9. Messy multi-photo posts. Mixed shapes make an uneven grid. Fix: use one ratio for every image in the post.
10. Heavy cover files. Large PNG photos load slowly. Fix: sRGB JPG under 100 KB for photographic covers, PNG only for logos and text.
11. No alt text. Fix: describe every image and include any text it contains.
12. Fixing sizes at posting time. Rushed resizing causes most of the problems above. Fix: prepare assets in a batch when you plan the week.

How Postprism helps you publish the right sizes on schedule

Getting sizes right is easiest when you prepare media in advance rather than at the moment of posting. Postprism is a scheduler built for that rhythm on LinkedIn, X, TikTok, YouTube, Bluesky and Pinterest.

• Keep sized assets ready. Store your 4:5, 1:1 and 9:16 versions in the media library and drag them onto the content calendar when you plan the week.
• One idea, a version per network. Write the core post once, then adapt it for LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok and others in the same post, with optional AI adaptation in your brand voice.
• Post at the right time. Postprism publishes at the time you set, in the time zone you choose, so a post planned for Friday evening goes out on Friday evening.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best aspect ratio for Facebook posts?

4:5 portrait at 1080 x 1350 px for photos and graphics, because it fills the most of a phone screen. Meta's own feed ad spec recommends 4:5 at 1440 x 1800 px. Use 1:1 square when one image must also work on Instagram and LinkedIn.

What size is a Facebook cover photo in 2026?

Facebook's help centre says covers display at 16:9 on computers and 2.4:1 on phones, with a minimum of 400 x 150 px, and the fastest-loading file is an sRGB JPG at 851 x 315 px under 100 KB. Design larger in the same proportion if you need more detail, and keep key content central.

What is the Facebook link preview image size?

Meta recommends at least 1200 x 630 px at about 1.91:1, with a maximum of 8 MB. Images below 600 x 315 px show as small previews, and the absolute minimum is 200 x 200 px.

Why is Facebook showing the wrong image for my link?

Facebook caches the og:image by its URL. Update the og:image tag on the page, give a changed image a new URL, and refresh the page in Meta's Sharing Debugger.

What size should Facebook Reels be?

9:16 vertical at 1080 x 1920 px. Meta said in 2025 that all Facebook videos would be shared as reels with no length or format restrictions, so other shapes upload, but vertical uses the full screen.

What is the Facebook Stories safe zone?

Meta's Stories ad spec says to keep text and logos out of roughly the top 14% (250 px) and bottom 20% (340 px). For Reels, keep the top 14%, bottom 35% and 6% on each side clear.

What size should a Facebook profile picture be?

Upload 320 x 320 px. Facebook shows it as a circle at 176 x 176 px on computers and 196 x 196 px on smartphones, so a simple logo or a clear face works best.

Can I schedule Facebook posts in advance?

Yes. Meta Business Suite lets you schedule Facebook Page posts in advance.