Free Guide
Social media image sizes
Every size that matters, with its source and the date it was checked — and a generator set up for each one. Verified October 2026.
There are only about a dozen image sizes worth knowing, and most of the confusion comes from lists that repeat each other without saying where their numbers came from or when anyone last looked. Every row below links to its source and says whether that source was the platform’s own documentation. The one size to get right first is 1200×630, the link preview image, because it is the only one that appears on every network at once.
Every size, in one table
| Size | Pixels | Stays visible | What it asks for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OG / social share | 1200×630 | No crop | Meta recommends at least 1200x630 and an aspect ratio as close to 1.91:1 as possible; the file must stay under 8 MB. | Meta for Developers — Images in Link Shares |
| X (Twitter) header | 1500×500 | 1200×400 Your avatar overlaps the lower-left corner on desktop and the edges crop on narrow screens — keep logos and copy inside the centre. | 1500x500 (3:1), JPG or PNG, under 2 MB. | X Help Centre — customising your profile Published guidance; not read from the platform’s own docs on this date. |
| YouTube thumbnail | 1280×720 | No crop | 1280x720 (16:9) recommended, 640x360 minimum, under 2 MB. | YouTube Help — add video thumbnails Published guidance; not read from the platform’s own docs on this date. |
| YouTube channel banner | 2560×1440 | 1546×423 Only this centre region is guaranteed to show on every device; TV crops least, phones crop most. | Minimum upload 2048x1152 (16:9) with a 1235x338 safe area; at the common 2560x1440 canvas that safe area scales to about 1546x423. | YouTube Help — change your channel banner Published guidance; not read from the platform’s own docs on this date. |
| LinkedIn banner (profile) | 1584×396 | 1100×300 Your profile photo sits over the lower-left on desktop and the banner crops shorter on mobile. | 1584x396 (4:1), JPG or PNG, under 8 MB. | LinkedIn Help — add or change your background photo Published guidance; not read from the platform’s own docs on this date. |
| LinkedIn banner (company page) | 1128×191 | No crop | 1128x191 recommended; larger 4:1 uploads are accepted and scaled down. | LinkedIn Help — edit your Page Published guidance; not read from the platform’s own docs on this date. |
| Facebook cover | 820×312 | 640×312 Desktop shows 820x312 and mobile shows a taller, narrower 640x360 crop — only the centre 640 wide appears on both. | Displays at 820x312 on desktop and 640x360 on mobile. | Facebook Help — page cover photos Published guidance; not read from the platform’s own docs on this date. |
| Instagram post (square) | 1080×1080 | No crop | 1080x1080 (1:1). | Instagram Help — photo and video dimensions Published guidance; not read from the platform’s own docs on this date. |
| Instagram post (portrait) | 1080×1350 | No crop | 1080x1350 (4:5). | Instagram Help — photo and video dimensions Published guidance; not read from the platform’s own docs on this date. |
| Blog hero @1x | 1600×900 | No crop | 1600x900 (16:9) — pair with @2x for retina displays. | Our own recommendation, not a platform requirement. |
| Blog hero @2x | 3200×1800 | No crop | 3200x1800 (16:9), served to 2x-density screens via srcset. | Our own recommendation, not a platform requirement. |
Specs verified October 2026.
Make one at any of them
The buttons in each section below load this editor at that exact size, keeping whatever background and colours you have already chosen. Downloads are PNGs at the stated pixel dimensions, with no signup.
Link previews
This is the one size worth getting right before any other, because it is the image that represents your page everywhere a link to it is posted — Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, iMessage and most feed readers all read the same Open Graph tag.
Make it 1200×630. Meta’s documentation asks for at least that and an aspect ratio close to 1.91:1, which clears every other platform’s minimum at the same time. One file, one tag, every destination.
X (Twitter)
The profile header is a 1500×500 strip, and it is never shown whole: your avatar covers the lower-left corner and the strip loses height as the screen narrows.
Posted images are a separate question from the header — a link you share uses your page’s Open Graph image, not anything you upload to the profile.
The cover photo renders at two different shapes: 820×312 on a desktop browser and 640×360 on a phone. One upload has to contain both, so the only reliably visible region is the middle.
The profile photo sits over the lower-left of the cover, which removes that corner from use entirely.
Personal profiles and company pages take different banners — 1584×396 for a profile, 1128×191 for a page — and they are different shapes as well as different sizes, so one file stretched onto the other looks wrong rather than merely cropped.
Both are far wider and flatter than a Facebook cover, which is why a single “social banner” rarely serves both networks.
YouTube
Thumbnails are 1280×720 and are judged at a fraction of that, so contrast and type size matter more than detail.
Channel banners are the most aggressively cropped image on any platform: the artwork is trimmed differently on a television, a desktop and a phone, and only the centre region is guaranteed to appear on all three.
Square at 1080×1080 and portrait at 1080×1350 are the two feed shapes worth exporting. Portrait occupies more vertical space in a scrolling feed, which is the practical argument for using it.
Both are tall relative to everything else on this page, so a graphic designed for a link preview will need recomposing rather than resizing.
Blog and site heroes
These are conventions rather than platform requirements — nothing enforces a hero size — but 1600×900 with a 3200×1800 companion covers standard and high-density screens without guessing.
If the hero is a generated background rather than a photograph, exporting SVG instead makes both sizes unnecessary.
How to read a size list without being misled
Three distinctions explain nearly every disagreement between one of these lists and another. The first is upload size versus display size. A platform may accept a large file and render it much smaller — YouTube’s banner is the clearest case, where the minimum upload and the region anyone actually sees are wildly different numbers. A list quoting one and a list quoting the other both look wrong to someone holding the other.
The second is recommended versus minimum. Meta’s guidance for link previews names 1200×630 as the recommendation and 600×315 as the floor, and plenty of lists print the floor as though it were the target. Images at the minimum are not rejected; they are simply displayed smaller or upscaled, and the result looks like a mistake nobody can point to.
The third, and the one that causes the most wasted work, is the crop. Any image with a profile photo over it or a responsive container around it is shown differently on a phone than on a desktop. The dimensions tell you the canvas; they do not tell you which part of it survives. That is why the table above carries a “stays visible” column, and why a header designed to the correct size can still lose its logo on mobile.
A fourth point, less a distinction than a warning: lists go stale quietly. A page published three years ago with no date on it looks exactly as authoritative as one checked last week, and the numbers it carries may have been right once. The date on this page is the date someone actually checked, and where a platform’s own documentation could not be read directly, the row says so rather than borrowing authority it does not have.
If you only act on one thing here, make it the link preview image. Profile headers and covers are seen by people who already found you; the 1200×630 is what represents your page every time anyone shares it anywhere, and it is the one most often left to chance.
One made at these sizes
A 1200×630 link preview made with the editor above, with no words on it at all. That is deliberate: a link card already renders your page title and description as text beside the image, so repeating them inside it spends the picture on something the reader can already see.
Tools for these sizes
Or browse all free tools.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
1200×630, the link preview image. It is the only one that appears on every platform at once, it is the one most often missing, and a page without it falls back to whatever each service can scrape — frequently a logo, a stray screenshot, or nothing at all.
The headline numbers are unusually stable — 1200×630 for link previews and 1500×500 for an X header have both been current for years. What changes more often is cropping behaviour, especially on mobile, which is why the safe-area column matters more than the raw dimensions for anything with a profile photo over it.
Specs on this page were checked in October 2026, and every row says where its numbers came from. Rows sourced from a platform’s own documentation are linked directly to it; rows marked as published guidance are consistent across current references but could not be read first-party, because some platform documentation blocks automated access.
Usually it is scaled and cropped rather than rejected, which is worse, because nothing tells you it went wrong. Too small and it is upscaled and soft; the wrong aspect ratio and the platform trims whichever edges it needs, which is how logos and words end up half-missing.
For link previews, yes — one 1200×630 serves every network. For profile furniture, no: a header, a cover and a banner are different shapes with different overlays, and sharing a file between them means accepting a bad crop on at least one. The sensible middle ground is to build one look and re-export it at each size, which is what the generator above is set up to do.
No. Pick any size on this page, make the image, download it. No signup, no email, no watermark, and nothing is uploaded — it is generated in your browser.
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