- The exact numbers, no rounding
- Why "roughly vertical" isn't good enough
- Step by step: getting it right every time
- Photos versus video: the parts that differ
- What goes wrong when you ignore the dimensions
- Templates, ads, and the sizes that get confused with Stories
- The uncomfortable bit nobody says out loud
- A quick pre-post checklist
- Frequently asked questions
- Further reading
The quick answer: the correct Instagram Story dimension is 1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels tall, a 9:16 vertical ratio, for both photos and videos. Keep your file under 30MB for images and under 4GB for video, and stay inside a safe zone that avoids the top 250px and bottom 250px where the profile bar and reply box sit. If you upload anything wider or shorter than that ratio, Instagram will either crop it, letterbox it with bars, or stretch it, and yes, people notice.
The exact numbers, no rounding
Instagram's own guidance says Stories should be 1080x1920px. That's not a suggestion someone made up, it's the size their servers expect, and every deviation from it costs you image quality one way or another. Here's what that breaks down to:
- Resolution: 1080 x 1920 pixels
- Aspect ratio: 9:16 (vertical)
- Minimum ratio Instagram will accept before cropping kicks in: 4:5
- Maximum ratio before it adds black bars: 1.91:1
- File size limit: 30MB for photos, 4GB for videos
- Video length: up to 60 seconds per Story card (longer clips get split automatically)
- Video format: MP4 or MOV, H.264 compression, recommended
If you're designing anything wider than 1080x1920, you're not future-proofing, you're just handing Instagram a file it has to mess with before it shows anyone your work.
Why "roughly vertical" isn't good enough
I had a client, a jewellery brand based in Manchester, who'd been exporting her Reels-turned-Stories at 1080x1350, which is the Instagram feed portrait size, not the Story size. Every single Story she posted had thick grey bars top and bottom. She'd been doing it for four months before she asked me why her Stories "looked cheap compared to competitors." The answer wasn't her lighting or her product shots, it was 570 pixels of dead space per frame that she'd never accounted for. We fixed the export preset in Canva in about ninety seconds and her completion rate on Stories (the percentage of people who watch through to the end) went from around 38% to 61% within two weeks. Same content, same jewellery, same lighting. Just the right canvas.
That's the bit nobody tells you plainly enough: the dimension problem is rarely a design problem, it's an export settings problem. Most people are using the wrong template inside their design tool, not making a creative mistake.
Step by step: getting it right every time
- Open your design tool (Canva, Adobe Express, Photoshop, whatever you use) and search specifically for "Instagram Story" as a template category, not "Instagram post" or "social media vertical."
- Confirm the canvas reads 1080 x 1920px before you add a single element. If it says 1080x1350 or 1080x1080, you're in the wrong template.
- Keep any text, logos, or calls to action within the middle 1080x1420px zone. The top 250px gets covered by your profile photo and username, the bottom 250px gets covered by the reply bar and sticker tray.
- For video, film vertically from the start. Don't shoot horizontal footage and crop it later, you'll lose the sides and often the subject's face ends up half out of frame.
- Export at MP4, H.264, and check the file is under 4GB before upload (this only really matters if you're stacking multiple long clips).
- Preview it in the app before you post to your main audience. Post it to your close friends list first if you're not sure, it costs nothing and shows you exactly how it renders.
Photos versus video: the parts that differ
The canvas size is identical for both, but the practical rules diverge a bit:
- Photos can be JPEG or PNG, and Instagram compresses PNGs harder than JPEGs in Stories, so a crisp PNG logo can come out looking slightly softer than you designed it. Export photos as high-quality JPEG unless you need transparency.
- Videos get auto-split into 60-second segments and Instagram re-encodes them, which is why a video that looked sharp on your phone sometimes looks slightly compressed once it's live. Shooting in good light and avoiding fast pans reduces how visible that compression is.
- Boomerangs and Reels shared to Stories keep their native ratio if you shot them right in the app, since Instagram's camera defaults to 9:16 already. Problems mostly come from importing outside footage shot on a proper camera at 16:9 or 4:3.
What goes wrong when you ignore the dimensions
Three things happen, in order of how often I see them:
- Cropping. Instagram will centre-crop a horizontal or square image to fit 9:16, which regularly slices off product edges, logos, or the top of someone's head.
- Letterboxing. If your file is close to vertical but not quite, Instagram adds background bars (usually blurred or black) above and below, which reads as low effort even when the content itself is good.
- Stretching. Some third-party scheduling tools (not Meta's own) will force-stretch an image to fit, distorting faces and text. This is the ugliest outcome and the hardest one to notice before you've already posted.
None of these are Instagram "punishing" you algorithmically as far as anyone has proven, but all three reduce watch-through time, and watch-through time is one of the signals Instagram does use when deciding whether to keep showing your Stories to people early in the sequence. So the dimension issue isn't just cosmetic, it has a knock-on effect on reach even if the platform never tells you that directly.
Templates, ads, and the sizes that get confused with Stories
Story dimensions get mixed up constantly with other Instagram formats, so it's worth being blunt about what's different. A regular Instagram feed post uses a different canvas entirely, usually square or 4:5 portrait, not 9:16. If you're running paid promotion and also want the assets to double up, the specs for Facebook ad images follow their own ratio rules too, and reusing a Story asset there without resizing usually looks wrong. If you manage Stories across Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, the safe zones and exact pixel counts shift slightly platform to platform, which is exactly why I put together a full breakdown of the correct Instagram Story sizes across different platforms, because "vertical" isn't a single number once you're posting the same content in three places.
If you want the deeper maths on why 9:16 became the standard ratio in the first place, and the numbers most guides skip over entirely, I go into that in this piece on the correct size ratio for an Instagram Story.
The uncomfortable bit nobody says out loud
Here's the thing most dimension guides won't tell you: getting the pixels exactly right will not save mediocre content. I've watched brands obsess over the precise 1080x1920 spec while posting Stories that are dull, over-designed, or stuffed with five text boxes competing for attention. The dimension is the floor, not the ceiling. It stops you looking sloppy by accident, but it does nothing to make people stop and watch. I'd rather see a slightly imperfect 1000x1800 photo with a good hook in the first two seconds than a technically flawless 1080x1920 slide that says nothing. Fix your dimensions first because it's free and takes five minutes, then spend your actual effort on the first frame, because that's the part deciding whether anyone taps through at all.
If you're managing this across a whole content calendar and it's eating hours you don't have, that's usually the moment to bring in outside help rather than keep guessing, and a proper AI consultant for small business can set up templates and export presets once so nobody on your team gets the ratio wrong again.
A quick pre-post checklist
- Canvas is 1080x1920px, not 1080x1080 or 1080x1350.
- Important text and faces sit clear of the top and bottom 250px.
- File is a JPEG for stills or MP4/H.264 for video.
- Video is filmed vertically, not cropped from horizontal footage.
- You've previewed it in-app, not just on your desktop screen.
If you get stuck troubleshooting a specific rendering issue, the wider Instagram help hub and the 81-guide collection on followers, hashtags, and fixes both cover related formatting problems that tend to show up alongside dimension mistakes, like stickers getting cut off or captions overlapping the reply bar.
If you want the wider picture, see what the Story spotlight feature does.
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If you want the wider picture, see how Instagram Story reshares work.
If you want the wider picture, see how to find your Instagram Story drafts.
If you want the wider picture, see keeping a Story private from specific viewers.
If you want the wider picture, see why an Instagram Story shows as unavailable.
If you want the wider picture, see how Story mentions work on Instagram.
Related: how to react to an Instagram Story.
Frequently asked questions
What is the correct Instagram Story size in pixels?
1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels tall, which is a 9:16 vertical ratio. This applies to both photos and videos uploaded as Stories.
Can I use a square photo for an Instagram Story?
You can, but Instagram will add background bars above and below it rather than stretching or cropping it by default, which usually looks less polished than designing for 9:16 from the start.
Why does my Instagram Story look cropped or cut off?
This almost always means your original file was a different ratio, commonly 4:5 or 16:9 feed-style dimensions, and Instagram center-cropped it to force it into the 9:16 Story frame.
What is the safe zone on an Instagram Story?
Roughly the top 250 pixels and bottom 250 pixels of the 1920px height, which get covered by the profile bar, username, and reply box, so keep key text and faces inside the middle section.
