What Are the Correct Instagram Story Sizes for Different Platforms

The short version: Instagram Stories need a 9:16 vertical frame at 1080 by 1920 pixels, and that same size works for Facebook Stories, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts without any real adjustment. The part that trips people up isn't the pixel size at all, it's the safe zone, because every one of those platforms hides different chunks of your frame behind profile icons, captions, and reply bars.

The size that works almost everywhere

If you remember one number from this whole post, make it this: 1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels tall. That's a 9:16 aspect ratio, and it's what Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts all want. You could design one file at that size and reuse it across all five without touching Photoshop or Canva again for resizing.

I know that sounds too simple for a topic that has forty different "cheat sheet" images floating around Pinterest with conflicting numbers. Most of those cheat sheets are outdated by two or three years, built for a version of Instagram that didn't have the current sticker tray or the swipe-up-turned-link-sticker layout. The pixel dimensions haven't changed much since 2019. What's changed is where each platform puts its own furniture on top of your image.

Instagram Stories, the exact numbers

• Recommended size: 1080 x 1920 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Minimum width: 500 pixels (anything smaller gets upscaled and looks soft)
• Maximum video length per story card: 60 seconds for video, unlimited for photos held at 5 seconds each
• File size cap: roughly 4GB for video, though anything over 30MB tends to compress harder and lose quality

If your image or video comes in at a different ratio, say 4:5 like a feed post, Instagram will letterbox it with black or blurred bars rather than stretch it, which is why so many reposted feed graphics look amateur in Stories. For a fuller breakdown of why 9:16 specifically outperforms square or portrait crops for retention, I wrote a longer piece on which aspect ratio works best for Instagram Stories, and it's worth reading if you're still designing everything square out of habit from feed posts.

The safe zone nobody puts in the size charts

Here's the bit that matters more than the pixel count. Instagram reserves roughly 250 pixels at the top of the frame for the profile photo, username, and timestamp, and another 250 to 320 pixels at the bottom for the reply bar and, if you're a business account, the "See more" or link sticker. That's nearly 600 pixels of a 1920 pixel tall image, close to a third of your canvas, that can be covered depending on the viewer's phone and whether they've got a notch or a punch-hole camera.

I learned this the expensive way. Back in 2023 I ran a client's product launch story sequence with the offer text sitting dead centre-bottom, maybe 150 pixels from the base of the frame. Looked perfect on my own phone in preview. Turned out on a good chunk of older Android devices with a shorter aspect ratio, the reply bar sat right over the discount code. We had 40 percent of viewers unable to read the one line that mattered, and we didn't catch it until three days into a five day campaign because the metrics just looked "a bit soft" rather than obviously broken. Now I keep anything critical, text, prices, calls to action, inside the middle 60 percent of the frame and never trust the edges.

Facebook Stories dimensions

Facebook Stories use the identical 1080 x 1920 canvas, 9:16 ratio, same as Instagram. Meta built them on the same underlying infrastructure, which is why content posted to "Both" (Instagram and Facebook Stories at once) doesn't need resizing between the two. Where Facebook differs is the safe zone at the bottom, which sits slightly higher because of the reaction bar, so anything you'd place at the very bottom edge on Instagram should sit about 100 pixels higher for Facebook to be safe. This is closely related to how Meta handles its ad formats generally, and if you're running paid Stories placements alongside organic ones, it's worth checking my guide on the standard Facebook ad sizes for 2026 because Stories ads have their own text overlay rules that organic Stories don't.

Snapchat

• Recommended size: 1080 x 1920 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max video length: 60 seconds per Snap, though Snapchat will auto-split longer clips
• Safe zone: keep text out of the bottom 100 pixels where the chat and camera icons sit

Snapchat is where I see the most cropping disasters, mainly because a lot of brands design in Canva at Instagram's exact template, forget Snapchat crops slightly differently on some Android devices, and end up with logos clipped at the edge. Export at the full 1080 x 1920 and leave generous padding, don't design edge to edge.

TikTok

• Recommended size: 1080 x 1920 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Minimum resolution: 540 x 960, though quality drops noticeably below 1080
• Safe zone: avoid the right-hand third of the screen (roughly the last 300 pixels of width) where the like, comment, share, and profile icons stack vertically, and avoid the bottom 250 pixels where the caption and sound title sit

TikTok's sidebar is the one thing that catches even experienced Instagram creators out. A graphic that reads perfectly on Instagram Stories, where the interaction buttons sit differently, can have half its right-hand text hidden behind TikTok's like button. If you're repurposing the same vertical video across both, design your text and logo placement to sit centred or left, never right-aligned.

YouTube Shorts

• Recommended size: 1080 x 1920 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max length: 3 minutes as of the current YouTube Shorts spec, though most successful ones sit under 60 seconds
• Safe zone: bottom 15 percent of frame reserved for the title, channel name, and subscribe button

WhatsApp Status

• Recommended size: 1080 x 1920 pixels
• Aspect ratio: 9:16
• Max video length: 30 seconds per Status update, which is shorter than every other platform on this list
• Text overlay: Status has no fixed UI overlay covering your content, making it the most forgiving of the group

WhatsApp Status gets ignored in almost every "story sizes" guide, which is odd given it has over two billion daily active users globally per Meta's own reporting. If you're running a small local business and your audience skews toward WhatsApp-heavy markets, particularly across parts of Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, Status deserves its own slot in your content calendar rather than being an afterthought.

I've listed the steps for an Instagram Story white screen on iPhone and Android. My guide to mixing photos and videos in Instagram Stories walks you through it.

Why one master template still beats five separate files

Here's the step-by-step I use with clients now, because designing five versions of every story is a waste of an afternoon nobody has:

• Build your base canvas at 1080 x 1920 pixels in Canva, Figma, or Adobe Express
• Add a visible safe zone guide: a rectangle roughly 970 pixels wide and 1150 pixels tall, centred in the frame, and keep every piece of text, logo, or CTA inside it
• Design your background art edge to edge so cropping variations across platforms don't leave white bars
• Export once at full resolution as PNG for stills or MP4 for video, then upload the same file natively to each platform rather than screen-recording or re-exporting
• Preview on at least two different phone models before publishing, because emulators and desktop previews don't reproduce real safe zone overlaps accurately

That fifth step is the one people skip, and it's the one that would have caught my client's covered discount code before it went live.

The uncomfortable bit nobody wants to say out loud

Here's what most sizing guides won't tell you: getting the dimensions right will not make a boring story perform. I've seen accounts obsess over pixel-perfect safe zones on a story that had nothing to say, no hook in the first frame, no reason for anyone to tap through rather than swipe past. Sizing correctly is table stakes, not a strategy. It stops your work looking amateur, it doesn't make it good.

I'll be blunt about something else too. A lot of the "correct sizes" content circulating online is written by people who've never shipped a story to five different platforms in the same week and compared the safe zone screenshots side by side. They're rewriting Meta's own help page in different words. If your story dimensions are technically correct but your first frame is a stock photo with a logo slapped on it, no chart in this post will fix your reach. Get the size right because it's free and it takes ten minutes, then spend the actual effort on the first three seconds, because that's what decides whether anyone watches the rest.

How this compares to feed posts and ads

Stories aren't the only Instagram format with its own sizing quirks. Feed posts run at a completely different ratio depending on orientation, and if you're building out content in bulk it's worth checking my breakdown of the correct dimensions for an Instagram post so your grid and your Stories don't fight each other visually. The same goes if you're running paid placements, since Facebook ad image specs, covered in my piece on the correct dimensions for Facebook ad images, differ enough from organic Stories that reusing one asset across both without adjustment often gets your ad flagged for excessive cropping.

File size and upload problems that have nothing to do with dimensions

Getting the pixel size right doesn't guarantee a clean upload. If your Story keeps stalling at the loading spinner or uploading painfully slowly, that's almost never a sizing problem, it's usually file compression, connection, or the app's own caching bugs. I've covered the specific fixes in detail in why Instagram Stories sometimes take so long to upload, but the short version is: export at a reasonable bitrate rather than the maximum your editing software allows, because a 200MB fifteen-second clip will choke on mobile data every single time.

One more small thing that's easy to miss: if you're adding hashtags to your Story text or a linked hashtag sticker, the same rules for the feed still apply around how many help versus how many just clutter the frame. I go into the real number in how many hashtags you're allowed to use on Instagram, and it applies whether you're tagging a feed post or a Story.

A quick reference to save you scrolling back up

• Instagram Stories: 1080 x 1920, 9:16, keep text out of the top and bottom 250 to 320 pixels
• Facebook Stories: 1080 x 1920, 9:16, bottom safe zone slightly larger than Instagram's
• Snapchat: 1080 x 1920, 9:16, avoid the bottom 100 pixels near the chat icon
• TikTok: 1080 x 1920, 9:16, avoid the right-hand 300 pixels and bottom 250 pixels
• YouTube Shorts: 1080 x 1920, 9:16, avoid the bottom 15 percent of frame
• WhatsApp Status: 1080 x 1920, 9:16, no fixed UI overlay, most forgiving of the six

For the rest of the series, see the Instagram Help: 81 Guides to Followers, Hashtags, Money, Accounts and Fixes.

For the next step, read how Story spotlight decides what to show.

A closely related guide: what a reshare on an Instagram Story means.

A closely related guide: where Instagram Story drafts are saved.

A closely related guide: how to hide an Instagram Story from certain people.

For the next step, read fixing an unavailable Instagram Story.

A closely related guide: what 'mentioned you in their story' means.

Related reading: instagram bonus program countries.

Related: The Best Format for a Landscape Instagram Story (And Why “Landscape” Is Usually the Wrong Question).

Related reading: white background in instagram story.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use the same Instagram Story for TikTok and YouTube Shorts without resizing?

Yes, technically, since all three use 1080 x 1920 at a 9:16 ratio. The dimensions match exactly. What won't match is the safe zone, so keep text and logos centred and away from the right-hand edge and bottom quarter of the frame if you plan to cross-post the same file everywhere.

What happens if I upload a square image to Instagram Stories?

Instagram will centre it and fill the empty space above and below with either a blurred version of the same image or a solid colour, depending on your settings. It displays fine but wastes roughly a third of the vertical frame that could have carried more of your message.

Why does my Story text get cut off on some phones but not others?

Different phones have different screen ratios, notches, and camera cutouts, which shifts exactly how much of the top and bottom of your 1080 x 1920 frame gets covered by the interface. Design everything important inside the middle 60 percent of the canvas and it should read cleanly on almost any device.

Do Instagram Story ads need a different size than organic Stories?

The pixel dimensions are the same, 1080 x 1920, but ads have stricter rules around how much of the frame text can occupy and where your call-to-action button sits, since that's a fixed UI element Meta controls rather than something you design around yourself.

Where to check the details

• Instagram's own Help Centre
• Meta's Business Help Centre