Instagram Story Size and Free Resizer With Safe Zones

Both are exactly 9:16, so either one fills the screen edge to edge. The larger one only adds detail, which is what Meta asks for in ads.

Use 1080 x 1920 for everyday Stories. It matches the width Instagram works at: its help page says it shares photos at up to 1080 pixels wide and sizes larger ones down. A vertical 1080p video from a phone is already 1080 x 1920.

Use 1440 x 2560 for ads. That is the resolution in Meta's Story ad specs, which also set a minimum width of 500 pixels and an aspect ratio tolerance of 1%. A picture that is almost 9:16 can still fall outside that 1%, which is one reason to export the exact size rather than trust a crop by eye.

Meta's Ads Guide says to leave roughly 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom and 6% of each side free of text, logos and other key elements, so the profile icon or the call to action button doesn't cover them.

In pixels, on a 1080 x 1920 Story that is about 269 at the top, 672 at the bottom and 65 at each side. On 1440 x 2560 it is about 358, 896 and 86. Those are the bands the resizer shades.

Two things to know about these numbers. First, they are written for ads. Instagram publishes no safe zone for ordinary Stories, where the bottom holds the message bar and the like and share buttons instead of an ad button, so you can usually go lower than 35%. Second, other guides quote different pixel margins, often 250 pixels at the top and bottom. We couldn't find those on any Meta page, so the resizer uses Meta's percentages.

Stickers, polls, links and mentions you add in the Story editor sit on top of your picture too. Plan an empty spot for them inside the safe area, or they will end up over the very text you designed.

Many phones are taller than 9:16. Meta's safe zone page says that on those screens it may zoom a 9:16 ad to fill the screen, which crops whatever sits outside the safe zone, or show it at 9:16 with black space around it. Meta states this for ads; Instagram doesn't document how ordinary Stories behave on tall screens, so keeping the important parts inside the safe zone is the cautious choice for both.

The other common cause is shape. If you add a 3:4 photo and pinch it to fill the screen, Instagram has to cut off the sides, and the result looks enlarged. Make the picture 9:16 first and you decide what gets cut.

A landscape photo is 3:2 or 4:3 lying on its side, far wider than a Story. To show all of it, place it in a 9:16 frame with something above and below.

In the resizer, choose Fit Whole Picture. The photo sits whole across the middle and the space above and below is filled with a blurred, slightly darkened copy of the same photo, so the colors match. Pick Plain Color instead if you want a solid background, for example your brand color, and then you have room above and below for a line of text.

Expect the photo itself to be small: a 4:3 landscape photo placed in 1080 x 1920 is 1080 x 810, under half the height of the screen. If the subject is a person, Fill with a careful crop usually looks better.

The Instagram story aspect ratio is 9:16: nine units wide for every sixteen tall. 1080 x 1920 and 1440 x 2560 are both exactly that.

Phone cameras usually take photos at 4:3, which held upright is 3:4. That is much wider than 9:16, so a camera photo needs either a crop off the sides (Fill) or bands above and below (Fit) before it fills a Story. Screenshots from most recent phones are taller than 9:16, so they need a small crop too.

This resizer handles pictures only. For video, Instagram's help page on sharing to your story says a video of up to 60 seconds shows as one clip and longer videos are broken into several clips.

Instagram doesn't publish a resolution for ordinary Story video. Record or export it upright at 1080 x 1920 and it will fill the frame.

For video ads in Stories, Meta's video specs list MP4, MOV or GIF at 9:16 and 1440 x 2560, H.264 with stereo AAC audio at 128 kbps or more, 1 second to 60 minutes long, up to 4 GB, at least 250 pixels wide. Ads under 16 seconds play in full; longer ones may be split into up to three Story cards.

For image ads in Stories, Meta's image specs are JPG or PNG, 9:16, 1440 x 2560 pixels, at least 500 pixels wide, at most 30 MB, with a 1% aspect ratio tolerance. Primary text can be 125 characters. An image ad shows for between 5 and 16 seconds, or until the viewer swipes out of the Story.

Choose 1440 x 2560 in the resizer for ads. It always exports the exact shape, so the 1% tolerance is never a problem, and it warns you if your photo is under 500 pixels wide.

Instagram works in pixels, and inches only come up when a design app asks for a print size. At 300 pixels per inch, 1080 x 1920 is 3.6 x 6.4 inches, or 9.14 x 16.26 centimeters, since an inch is 2.54 centimeters by definition. At 72 pixels per inch it is 15 x 26.67 inches. Whatever the app shows, export 1080 x 1920 pixels.

In Canva, Figma or Photoshop, start a 1080 x 1920 pixel canvas and add guides 269 pixels from the top, 672 from the bottom and 65 from each side. Text and logos go inside the guides; photos can run to the edges.

On a Mac you can do it in Preview, as Apple's Preview guide shows: draw a box with Rectangular Selection, open Tools, then Show Inspector to read its size while you drag it toward 9:16, click Crop, then use Tools, then Adjust Size with Resample image on to set 1080 x 1920. Preview has no fixed ratio for the selection and no safe zone guides, so the resizer above is quicker.

The photo is drawn onto a canvas at the exact size you chose and saved with the browser's own image export. The safe zone shading is drawn on the preview only, never into your file. Nothing is uploaded, so unreleased designs and private photos stay on your device.

We ran it on 3 November 2026 with a generated 4032 x 3024 test image, the size of a typical 12 megapixel phone photo. Fill at 1080 x 1920 gave a 1080 x 1920 JPG of 421 KB; Fit gave 393 KB. At 1440 x 2560 the JPG was 593 KB and the PNG 3.5 MB. A 640 x 480 image was flagged as enlarged 4.0 times. Real photos with more texture will give bigger files, still far under Meta's 30 MB.

What it doesn't do: video, text, stickers or posting. JPG files start at high quality and only drop it if a file would go over 30 MB.

The social media image sizes guide lists every network on one page, and social media character limits covers captions. For YouTube, the YouTube thumbnail size and YouTube banner size tools work like this one. If you post carousels, the Instagram carousel maker builds the slides in your brand.

Spreadcast doesn't post Stories, and the resizer above is free with nothing to sign up for. What Spreadcast publishes to Instagram is feed posts, carousels and Reels, designed in your brand with a caption written for each network. It schedules them alongside TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and Discord from one calendar, and the Instagram MCP server lets Claude or ChatGPT draft and schedule them for you.

If you make an app, start free with your App Store link: Spreadcast reads the listing and makes three posts from it for you to download before you pay anything. For any other brand, the plans page shows what each plan includes.