Facebook Post Sizes: Image and Video Dimensions Guide

Publishing Facebook posts with the wrong dimensions is a common mishap that most agencies find out after they schedule them. For example:

• An image looks perfect when you schedule it, but Facebook crops it in the feed if the dimensions are wrong. 
• A designer approves an image based on the preview, but the live post renders differently across surfaces.
• Feed posts, Stories, Reels, and carousels each require different aspect ratios, making a single export unreliable across formats.
• Facebook’s heavy image compression can make your graphics look blurry or pixelated. This leaves clients questioning why their sharp, professional designs look low-quality once published.
• Cover photos crop differently on mobile vs desktop. As a result, profile images get masked to a circle that slices off the content.

This results in hours of content preparation and scheduling becoming unproductive. In many cases, agencies remain unaware of these Facebook post size errors because their scheduling tools never flag them.

RecurPost helps prevent such issues by publishing Facebook posts in the exact dimensions the platform expects. This helps ensure that client content for Pages, Groups, and Profiles is published without cropping, rejection, or quality loss.

RecurPost’s Facebook scheduler handles every publishing surface where Facebook permits API access. For Profile Stories and certain Group post types, the Graph API restricts direct publishing.

As a result, the mobile reminder workflow is used to manage those cases. Facebook Ads creative sizing is handled within Ads Manager and falls outside the RecurPost scheduling workflow.

Facebook Post Sizes at a Glance

The summary below covers every organic Facebook surface RecurPost publishes to, with Facebook’s headline spec on the left and the most common production note on the right.

Each format is broken down below with the upload constraint Facebook enforces, RecurPost’s safety buffer for that constraint, the fit and non-fit conditions, and a named agency scenario.

Facebook Feed Single-Image Post: 1080×1080 or 1200×630

A single-image post is the format agencies publish most for clients. One image, one caption, straight into the feed. It carries promotions, quotes, product shots, and most day-to-day content.

This is primarily because the entire message is conveyed within a single frame, making image dimensions critical to whether the content is displayed clearly or appears cropped and reduced in quality.

Facebook accepts three aspect ratios for a single feed photo:

• 1:1 square at 1080×1080,
• 4:5 portrait at 1080×1350,
• 1.91:1 landscape at 1200×628 (commonly set to 1200×630).

Use 1080×1080 as the safe default. A square image displays without cropping on both desktop and mobile feeds. Uploading a square image to a link post may cause Facebook to add white padding on the sides. This happens to preserve the original aspect ratio. For optimal display, the image format should match the intended post type.

Most people are unaware that a 4:5 portrait at 1080×1350 is the strongest performer for reach. It gives more screen space than a square post on mobile, and because many users use the Facebook mobile app, the vertical format dominates engagement. If the image needs maximum visibility, post it at 1080×1350 rather than square.

RecurPost’s composer caps the upload at 10 MB as a safety buffer. Anything larger triggers RecurPost’s resize pipeline, including stripping metadata first, scaling the longest edge down to 1920 pixels if needed, then iteratively dropping JPEG quality or reducing PNG dimensions via ffmpeg. As a result, the file lands inside Facebook’s window every time.

Facebook Video Feed Post: (1280×720 or 1080×1080, ≤ 4 GB and 240 Min)

A video feed post is the format agencies use for demos, promos, client testimonials, and any message that needs motion. Facebook feed videos support three aspect ratios, such as landscape (16:9), square (1:1), and vertical (4:5).

• Use 1280×720 for standard 16:9 landscape video, which suits horizontal content like tutorials and vlogs and reads well on desktop.
• Use 1080×1080 for a 1:1 square, which takes about 78% more screen space than landscape on mobile and tends to earn higher engagement.
• Whatever the shape, upload at 1080p or higher, because Facebook re-encodes every video and cannot add detail back to a low-resolution file.

Facebook auto-plays it muted as people scroll, so the first frame and the dimensions do most of the work. It only accepts organic feed video as MP4 or MOV with H.264 video and AAC audio, up to 4 GB per file and 240 minutes in length.

It is important to note that resolutions should be up to 4K. However, the video will show up as cropped, soft, or rejected at upload if you get the specs wrong.

Plus, hook viewers in the first 2 to 3 seconds, since the video auto-plays muted in the feed. Add captions for user engagement. This is because many people watch with the sound off. For maximum mobile reach, post the video as square or 4:5 rather than landscape.

In RecurPost, you upload the video, add the caption, set a custom thumbnail, then pick the Page and time. Feed videos are published directly at the scheduled time, so a video post to a Page needs no manual step. RecurPost downscales the output to a 1280×720 maximum as a safety buffer. As a result, the file always lands well inside Facebook’s processing window.

Therefore, a 4K landscape source comes out at 1280×720, and a 1080×1080 square comes out at 720×720. RecurPost clamps frame rate into the 24-60 fps range, and out-of-range aspect ratios get padded onto the nearest in-range canvas instead of being squashed.

You can preview the feed videos in real-time to see how the video, thumbnail, and caption will appear in the feed. This allows you to verify that the content appears correctly before it is published. As a result, errors get caught early, because Facebook fails uploads that are missing media, in an unsupported format, or oversized.

Facebook Link Share Post (1200×630 Og Image, ≤ 8 MB)

A link-share post is how agencies drive traffic off Facebook to a client’s site, blog post, or landing page. You add the URL to the caption, and Facebook builds a preview card from the destination page’s Open Graph (OG) meta tags. This t card carries the image, headline, and description, and it is the part people actually click. Therefore, its specs decide whether the link looks worth tapping.

Agencies don’t need to upload the preview image to the scheduler. Facebook pulls it from the page’s Open Graph meta tags. So the right size lives on the destination page, not in the post itself.

Facebook recommends setting the OG image to 1200×630 pixels at a 1.91:1 ratio, and the file must be 8MB. This is the size Facebook defined when it created the Open Graph protocol, and it remains the best default in 2026.

It renders crisp across the feed, Messenger, and the sidebar. Images smaller than 600×315 show as a small thumbnail instead of the large card. It is important to note that if either side drops below 200×200, Facebook shows no image at all, just the plain URL.

RecurPost’s composer reads the destination URL’s OG card before scheduling. As a result, a broken Open Graph image that is oversized, missing, or smaller than 600×315 surfaces before publishing.

An agency scheduling a client’s weekly blog round-up needs every link card to render with the hero image, not the favicon. RecurPost resolves the OG card in preview before scheduling. A broken OG image on the source page shows up before publishing. This way, the agency fixes the source page once, and the same correct card renders across every recurring post.

Facebook Organic Carousel (1080×1080 per Card, 2-10 Cards)

Agencies use organic carousels to tell a story, walk through step-by-step content information, or show a product range without crowding one frame. It also lifts dwell time, since carousels make complex topics easier to digest across slides, and every swipe is another second on the post.

To make carousels perform, every card has to share the same aspect ratio. Facebook locks the whole carousel to the first card’s ratio and crops or pads every card that doesn’t match. Drop a portrait shot in with square ones, and Facebook slices its top and bottom off. Build all cards at 1080×1080, and they display uniformly across the set with no cropping.

RecurPost publishes carousel cards at the 1080×1080 spec. For example, a SaaS client posts a five-slide product update once a week. The agency can stage all five cards in the RecurPost composer and preview the carousel exactly as Facebook will show it.

The agency then queues the post into the client’s Page schedule. A mid-carousel ratio change from 1:1 to 4:5 crops the portrait card down to a square and clips the visible content. Uniform 1:1 across every card is the only safe path.

Facebook Stories (1080×1920, 9:16, 60 sec, 100 MB)

Agencies use Facebook Stories for timely content, like a flash promotion, a behind-the-scenes clip, an event reminder, a quick poll. Since Stories are displayed in full-screen mobile view, vertical formatting is essential for proper presentation.

Build every Story at 1080×1920 in a 9:16 ratio. Anything other than 9:16 gets padded with auto-generated color bars or cropped, which kills the full-screen effect. It is important to note that Facebook overlays the profile picture, name, and close button across the top 250 px.

The reply bar and action buttons occupy the bottom 250 pixels of the screen. To ensure visibility, important visual elements should be kept within the central 1080 × 1420 safe area.

A 100 MB file size and 60-second duration per segment serve as practical thresholds for fast and reliable uploads. However, these do not represent Facebook’s official maximum limits. The technical caps are 30 MB for photos and up to 4 GB for video. Therefore, it reads more accurately as a recommendation than as Facebook’s rule.

RecurPost outputs Story video at a ≤90 MB safety ceiling, so the codec normalization pass can’t push the file over Facebook’s 100 MB hard cap. The system enforces a 9:16 aspect ratio exclusively. Source files outside this range are padded onto a 1080 × 1920 canvas rather than stretched. Frame rates are also restricted to a range of 24–60 fps.

RecurPost’s Story publishing splits into two flows because of the Facebook Graph API. Pages where Facebook permits Story publishing via the API direct-publish at the scheduled time.

Personal Profiles and certain Group post types, where Facebook restricts the Graph API for Stories, use RecurPost’s mobile-notification flow. The queue fires a push to the RecurPost mobile app at post time, and one tap publishes the Story.

Facebook Reels (1080×1920, 9:16, 3-90 seconds)

Facebook Reels is currently one of the platform’s most heavily promoted content formats. It typically generates significantly higher organic reach than standard feed posts. As a result, agencies often rely on Reels to expand a client’s audience.  Facebook publishes Reels via the Graph API at 1080×1920 (recommended) with a 540×960 minimum, in a 9:16 aspect ratio.

The Reel must be created using an MP4 container, H.264 video, AAC audio, 24-60 fps, 3 to 90 seconds in duration. An audio track is mandatory, as the Reels endpoint rejects uploads without audio. The Graph API does not publish a hard file-size cap for Reels.

RecurPost forces 9:16 only, normalizes the codec to H.264, and clamps frame rate into a 30-60 fps safety range. This is stricter than the Graph API’s 24-fps floor to keep playback smooth on lower-tier devices.

RecurPost synthesizes a silent stereo audio track at 48 kHz if the source has no audio. This ensures the upload always meets Facebook’s audio requirements.

The tool accepts a separate cover frame at 1080×1920, which lets the agency control how the Reel appears in the client’s grid.

Also, the top 250 px holds the account handle and follow button, and the bottom 250 px holds the caption, audio bar, and engagement buttons. The right edge also stacks the like, comment, and share icons.

Hooks, captions, and any calls to action should be placed within the central 1080 × 1420 safe area. They should also remain clear of the right side of the frame to prevent obstruction by the interface.

Facebook Page Profile Picture and Cover Photo

The profile picture and cover photo are the Page’s storefront. They load before any post, set the first impression, and then mostly stay put. Both crop differently on mobile and desktop; therefore, the safe move is to design for the smaller view and check both before saving.

The profile picture should be a square image uploaded at 360×360 px or larger to stay sharp on high-resolution screens. Facebook renders it as a circle, about 170×170 px on desktop and 128×128 px on mobile. Center the logo and leave padding on all sides, or the circular crop eats into the mark. For a Page, this is almost always the client’s logo.

RecurPost uploads at 320×320 pixels, so the rendered image stays sharp on retina screens. A PNG with a transparent background reads cleanly against Facebook’s chrome and works for a wordmark or logo. A JPEG with an embedded background color may not integrate well with Facebook’s interface overlays, potentially affecting visual consistency.

The cover photo displays at about 820×312 px on desktop and 640×360 px on mobile, with the sides cropped on mobile. Design it at 851×315 px, but upload it at 1640×859 px (2x retina) so it stays crisp, because uploading at the exact display size is what makes covers look blurry after Facebook re-compresses them.

RecurPost uploads at 1640×624 pixels, so the image stays sharp at retina resolution. Facebook’s mobile display crops portions of the image that remain visible only on desktop. Therefore, the central 820×360 strip is the only safe area for client logos, taglines, or seasonal hero text.

Facebook Group Cover Photo: 1640×856

A Group cover serves as the wide banner at the top of a Facebook Group’s page. For optimal quality, it should be uploaded at 1640 × 856 pixels in a 1.91:1 aspect ratio. This helps maintain image clarity across standard, retina, and high-resolution displays.

Important design elements should be placed within the center of the cover. Facebook displays slightly different portions of the cover across desktop and mobile views, with only about 662 pixels of the height visible on desktop. The most reliable safe area is the central 1640 × 662 pixel region.

The Group name and interface buttons are overlaid on the lower portion of the cover. For this reason, text and logos should be kept clear of the bottom edge. Client logos and headlines should be placed within the central safe area. This ensures the cover remains clear and visually balanced across both mobile and desktop views.

A Group cover and a Page cover are not the same shape, so they are not interchangeable. A Page cover is about 851×315 pixels, a much wider and shorter 2.7:1 banner.

A Group cover requires dimensions of 1640 × 856 pixels with a 1.91:1 aspect ratio. Using the same asset for both Page and Group covers can result in improper cropping due to differing dimensions. Creating dedicated designs for each format ensures optimal presentation.

Two more details worth knowing are:

• Use JPG for photo-based covers and PNG for designs with text or a logo, and keep the file under about 2 MB so Facebook compresses it less.
• Also, only a Group’s admins and moderators can change its cover, and this change must be completed directly within the group itself.

RecurPost uploads at 1640×856 pixels, so the image stays sharp at retina resolution, with the central 1640×600 strip the safe area on both desktop and mobile.

RecurPost efficiently manages your monthly scheduling across multiple Facebook Groups. Due to native Meta API restrictions on automated group publishing, these posts are deployed via RecurPost’s mobile reminder system.

You will receive a notification at your scheduled time, allowing you to instantly confirm and publish the post directly from the mobile app.

Common Facebook Upload Errors and How RecurPost Handles Them

RecurPost’s composer identifies upload-time errors early, helping agencies avoid discovering media-sizing issues during client presentations. Its error catalog covers more than 850+ documented platform-specific error types. The table below outlines the seven Facebook errors most commonly associated with media sizing. It also includes the buyer-friendly messages into which RecurPost translates each error.

Every encoded transformation lands in the video_resize_logs audit table with input attributes, output attributes, the ffmpeg command, the stderr tail, the exit code, and the run duration.

An agency lead can trace any failed publication to the precise resize step applied to the source file. This removes the ambiguity of a generic “Facebook just rejected it” error, providing greater transparency than many other scheduling tools.

RecurPost Upload Constraints and What Fails Before Facebook Sees It

RecurPost surfaces upload errors at the composer, before the post enters Facebook’s publish queue. It catches the failure at upload time, not as a rejection after a client signs off.

RecurPost’s image pipeline accepts JPEG, PNG, and WebP for Facebook images and caps the upload at 10 MB, a safety buffer well inside Facebook’s image-handling window. Anything larger runs through the resize pipeline automatically:

• strip EXIF metadata first, 
• scale the longest edge down to 1920 pixels if needed, 
• iteratively drop JPEG quality (or reduce PNG dimensions via ffmpeg) until the file fits.

RecurPost’s video pipeline accepts MP4 and MOV and normalizes the codec to H.264 at upload. The tool runs every source video through a dimension-check + resize pass: 

• Compare aspect ratio against the Facebook accepted range (9:16 to 16:9 for feed, 9:16 only for Stories and Reels), 
• Scale or pad to fit the platform canvas, 
• clamp frame rate, 
• downmix audio channels and sample rate if needed, 
• normalize the codec, 
• cap file size where Facebook enforces one (Stories at 100 MB hard cap, RecurPost outputting at ≤90 MB to stay safely inside).

For feed video, Facebook accepts up to 4 GB and 240 minutes. RecurPost downscales the output to a 1280×720 safety ceiling so a 4K source still lands inside Facebook’s processing window.

The pipeline writes every transformation to a video_resize_logs audit row. As a result, any failed publication can be traced back to the exact FFmpeg processing steps that were applied.

Facebook’s scheduling window of 20 minutes to 29 days from now is enforced inside the composer. You can’t queue a post that Facebook would reject at API time. RecurPost runs per-account time zones on the connected Page, Group, or Profile. Therefore, a US-Eastern Page and a Singapore Page schedule independently against local audiences.

RecurPost’s in-composer preview renders the desktop Page card, the mobile feed card, and the Stories safe-zone overlay. A 12-Page agency batch-uploading 80 posts a week through RecurPost’s CSV bulk uploader gets every encoding issue flagged at upload.

RecurPost flags variable-frame-rate video, an oversized image, or a wrong-ratio carousel card before the post enters Facebook’s queue. Each error shows up in the composer with a fix-it instruction, not at post time in front of a client.

RecurPost’s batch workflow stages creative once in the library and schedules every post in one pass after a bulk preview.

A 4K master file uploaded directly into the composer for a feed photo is automatically processed through the resize pipeline. This removes the need for agencies to manually pre-export the asset at a smaller size.

These dimension checks run inside the RecurPost social media scheduler before anything reaches Facebook, so wrong-ratio, oversized, or wrong-codec media is caught at upload rather than at publish.

Cross-Platform Reuse: Facebook to Instagram, TikTok, Threads

A 1080×1080 square and a 1080×1920 vertical (9:16) asset reuse across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads without re-cropping — but each platform enforces its own safe areas and limits, so confirm the target specs before reusing: Instagram post sizes, TikTok video sizes, and Threads image and video specs.

A 1080×1920 vertical Story or Reel reuses even more widely. The same 9:16 clip fits Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and Threads. Before you reuse it, remove any platform watermark, since a visible TikTok or editing-app watermark signals lazy reposting and hurts reach.

A 1200×630 link-share image is the exception. The image itself will display on Instagram, since 1.91:1 is the widest ratio its feed accepts. However, Instagram has no link-preview post, and the links in Instagram captions aren’t clickable.

Therefore, the link-share format doesn’t carry over. On Instagram, the visual should be published as a standard image, preferably in a square or 4:5 aspect ratio. The associated link should then be placed either in the bio or within a Stories link sticker.

RecurPost’s per-platform composer customises caption, hashtags, first comment, location tag, and collaborator invite. The platform allows TikTok comment/duet/stitch controls, YouTube category and tags, and GBP CTA buttons per network. Therefore, the media reuses, but the platform-specific copy and controls stay platform-native.

RecurPost’s dimension-check and resize pipeline is applied independently against the specifications of each platform. A single source file lands inside Facebook’s, Instagram’s, TikTok’s, and Threads’ hard limits without any re-export work on the client side.

The same source 1080×1920 vertical clip ends up at ≤90 MB inside the Facebook Stories pipeline. At ≤280 MB inside the Instagram pipeline (Instagram’s 300 MB hard cap leaves 20 MB of headroom), and at the TikTok and Threads outputs, the platform expects.

Facebook Post Sizes: FAQs

Try RecurPost

RecurPost’s Agency plan covers 20 social accounts (Facebook Pages, Groups, and Profiles included) for $79 per month with no per-user seat charge. RecurPost’s 14-day free trial includes full Page, Group, and Profile scheduling with the same composer preview, bulk uploader, dimension-check + resize pipeline.

Agencies can stage real client posts at the dimensions above before paying. See plans and pricing for every add-on with its category and unit price, or start your 14-day free trial with no credit card.