Video sizes, lengths, file limits and safe zones for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, Snapchat, Threads and Bluesky, drawn to scale and sourced.
Social media video sizes come down to three shapes: 9:16 vertical at 1080 × 1920 for Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Stories and Snapchat; 4:5 at 1080 × 1350 for the Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn feeds; and 16:9 at 1920 × 1080 for YouTube, X and anything watched on a TV. What differs between platforms is everything else: a Reel can run 20 minutes in the app, a YouTube Short 3, an X post 2 minutes 20 seconds without Premium, and file limits range from 300 MB on Bluesky to 256 GB on YouTube. This page lists those specs for 31 placements on 10 platforms, each with a link to the platform's own help, ads or developer page and the date we checked it.
Platforms publish less than most spec charts suggest. TikTok gives no pixel safe zone and no organic resolution, YouTube has no official safe zone for organic Shorts, and Threads specs exist only in its API docs, so those values are marked as not officially published or attributed to the page they come from. The phone mockups show where each app's buttons and captions cover the frame, and the check box tells you which placements a video file fits as it is. It reads the width, height, length and size in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
How to use
- Pick a platform chip or search ("reels", "ads", "4:5", "60 fps") to narrow the cards and the at-a-glance table.
- Open a card for the full spec, the sources and the verified date. Copy puts a one-line summary on your clipboard; the # link points straight at that placement.
- Under Check my video, choose a video file. Each placement is marked Fits, Works with notes, or Needs changes, with what to trim, crop or compress.
- Use the safe-zone mockups to place captions, faces and logos, and the one-master diagram to plan 4:5, 1:1 and 16:9 crops from one vertical edit.
- Print or save as PDF for a reference sheet; the drawings print too.
Frequently asked questions
What size is an Instagram Reel?
1080 × 1920 pixels at 9:16. Instagram accepts any ratio from 1.91:1 to 9:16, needs at least 720 pixels and 30 fps, and allows Reels up to 20 minutes recorded or uploaded in the app, though reels over 3 minutes are not recommended to people who don't follow you. Meta's ads guide uses 1440 × 2560 for Reels ads. Keep text out of roughly the top 14% and bottom 35% of the frame.
What is the best video size for TikTok?
1080 × 1920 at 9:16. TikTok asks for at least 720p and vertical framing; its posting API accepts 360 to 4096 pixels per side, 23–60 fps, MP4, WebM or MOV up to 4 GB, and 3 minutes for every creator (5 or 10 minutes for some accounts). In-feed ads take 9:16, 1:1 or 16:9 with a 540 × 960 minimum for vertical and up to 500 MB.
What size is a YouTube Short?
1080 × 1920 at 9:16, or square 1:1, and up to 3 minutes long for uploads since 15 October 2024. Shorts play at a maximum of 1080p. A vertical or square video of 3 minutes or less is treated as a Short automatically; a 16:9 video is not. A Short over 1 minute with an active Content ID claim is blocked.
What resolution should I export social videos at?
1080 × 1920 for vertical, 1080 × 1350 for 4:5 and 1920 × 1080 for horizontal, as an MP4 with H.264 video, AAC audio at 48 kHz, a constant 30 fps (or the rate you shot at) and Rec. 709 colour. About 8–12 Mbps is enough for 1080p; YouTube's guide asks for 8 Mbps at 30 fps and 12 at 60. Exporting 4K for Instagram or TikTok does not help, because they re-encode it.
What are safe zones?
The part of a vertical video that the app's interface does not cover. On Reels and Stories, the profile name sits at the top and the caption, audio and reply bar at the bottom, so Meta says to keep about the top 14%, bottom 35% and 6% on each side free of text and logos. YouTube's vertical-ad guidance is 288 px top, 672 px bottom, 48 px left and 192 px right on a 1080 × 1920 frame; Pinterest's is 270, 790, 65 and 195 px. TikTok publishes no numbers.
Can one video work on every platform?
Mostly. A 1080 × 1920 9:16 MP4 under 3 minutes, with captions and everything important in the middle of the frame, is accepted by Reels, TikTok, Shorts, Stories, Snapchat Spotlight, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Crop it to 4:5 or 1:1 for feeds without losing resolution. The exception is 16:9: cropping a vertical 1080p master to widescreen leaves a 1080 × 608 strip, so shoot YouTube long-form horizontally or in 4K.
Why so many spec charts disagree
Most charts copy each other, and most numbers came from a platform page that has since changed. Some of what we found when checking every row against the source on 18 October 2026:
• Meta's safe zone is now a percentage (14% top, 35% bottom, 6% sides), which works out to about 269 and 672 px on 1080 × 1920. The 250 px / 340 px figures in older guides leave too little room at the bottom.
• Meta's ads guide recommends 1440 × 2560 for Reels and Stories ads, not 1080 × 1920. Both upload fine; the larger file gives the re-encoder more to work with.
• YouTube thumbnails: the recommended size is now 3840 × 2160 (2160 × 3840 for Shorts), up to 50 MB from desktop. 1280 × 720 and 2 MB are the old figures; 640 px wide is still the minimum.
• Bluesky raised video length to 10 minutes and file size to 300 MB in 2026. X Premium allows 4 hours on web and iOS, but some X help pages still say 3 hours.
• LinkedIn's video help pages disagree with each other on maximum length (15 or 10 minutes) and on whether MOV is supported. Export MP4 and stay under 10 minutes to be safe.
Vertical, square or horizontal?
Go by where the video plays, not where it was shot. Full-screen feeds (Reels, TikTok, Shorts, Stories, Spotlight) fill the phone only with 9:16; anything wider gets bars or is cropped. Scrolling feeds (Instagram and Facebook feed, LinkedIn, Threads) show 4:5 at the largest size they allow without cropping, and 1:1 is the safe choice for carousels and X. 16:9 belongs on YouTube long-form, Facebook in-stream, X on desktop and anything that ends up on a TV.
If you can make only one version, make it 9:16 and keep the subject, captions and logo in the middle 4:5 area. That one edit then crops cleanly to 4:5 and 1:1 at full width. Shoot a separate horizontal take, or record in 4K, if you also need a proper YouTube video.
What the video check can and can't tell you
The check reads four things your browser knows about a file: width, height, duration and file size. It compares them with the published limits for each placement: aspect ratio range, minimum and recommended resolution, minimum and maximum length, and maximum file size. A placement shows Needs changes when a hard limit is broken (too long, too big, wrong shape) and Works with notes when the video uploads but is not the recommended shape or size, or when only some accounts can post it.
Browsers don't report codec, frame rate or bitrate reliably, so those aren't checked. If a platform rejects a file that passes here, re-export it as H.264 + AAC MP4 at a constant frame rate. Files your browser can't decode, such as some ProRes or HEVC MOVs in Chrome, can't be checked at all.
Related free tools
- Social Media Image Sizes — Current image sizes for Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Threads and Bluesky, with a cropper that exports exact sizes.
- Social Media Character Limits — Every character limit for X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and 13 more platforms, with sources, plus a box that checks your text against all of them.
- Video Compressor — Shrink MP4, MOV or WebM videos to a quality level or a target size like 10 MB for Discord. H.264 MP4 output, processed on your device.
- Video Trimmer — Cut the start and end off a video on a frame preview. Fast lossless cut or exact re-encode, mute, and reframe to 9:16, 1:1 or 4:5.
- Video to GIF — Turn an MP4, MOV or WebM clip into a palette-optimised GIF. Trim on a preview, set width, fps and looping. Nothing is uploaded.
- YouTube Thumbnail Downloader — Paste any YouTube link and download its thumbnail in every size, from 1280×720 HD down to 120×90.
- Engagement Rate Calculator — Calculate engagement rate by followers, reach, impressions or views, for one post or an average across many.