Facebook Reels size

Facebook used to keep reels and longer videos apart. Meta’s June 2025 announcement folded them together: videos posted to Facebook are shared as reels, and Meta said reels on Facebook would no longer have any length or format restrictions.

For reel makers, the practical effect is that length no longer decides the format. A 20-second clip and a 20-minute tutorial both go up as reels from the same 9:16 project. The frame is unchanged: a reel still plays full screen on a phone held upright, with Facebook’s buttons and your caption laid over it.

Scheduling tools didn’t get the same freedom. Meta’s Reels Publishing API, the route they use to post reels to Pages, still documents a 9:16 frame and 3 to 90 seconds.

Meta’s Reels Publishing API sets firmer limits than the app does. If a tool fails to publish a reel, check it against this list:

• Length. Anything under 3 seconds or over 90 seconds is outside the documented range; trim it, or post it from Facebook yourself.
• Destination. The API publishes to Facebook Pages only, so reels for a personal profile have to be posted by hand.
• Resolution. 540 × 960 is the floor, and 1080 × 1920 is recommended.
• Frame rate. The documented range is 24 to 60 fps; a 15 fps export from a screen-capture or GIF tool falls outside it.
• Volume. Meta allows 30 API-published reels in any moving 24-hour period, so a Page that schedules more has to wait or post the rest itself.
• Encoding. MP4 is recommended, with H.264 or H.265 video and AAC Low Complexity audio at 48 kHz and at least 128 kbps.

Facebook stacks the reaction, comment and share buttons up the right-hand side of a reel and shows your name and caption across the bottom. Hootsuite’s guidance for Facebook Reels ads converts that into margins: nothing important in the top 14%, the bottom 35% or the outer 6% on each side.

On a 1080 × 1920 frame, what is left is close to a square: about 950 pixels wide and 980 tall, starting some 270 pixels from the top. Its centre sits roughly 200 pixels above the middle of the frame, so centring a headline on the full frame puts it in the lower part of the clear area, nearer the caption.

Tip: Burned-in subtitles are the text most likely to meet the caption, because both sit low in the frame. Keep their last line above the 65% mark, about 1,248 pixels down a 1080 × 1920 frame.

Stories margins are shallower at the bottom: Meta’s Stories video ad guide asks for 20%, not 35%. A Story layout moved straight into a reel can therefore put text inside the reel’s bottom band, so check subtitles and stickers again before reusing one.

A landscape video can now be posted as a reel as it is, but it cannot fill an upright screen. To fill the frame, crop a vertical slice out of it. How sharp the slice looks depends on the resolution you filmed at.

The slice is also only about a third of the width of the original shot, so whatever happens near the sides is gone. Frame with the crop in mind: keep the speaker, the product or the action in the middle third.

Tip: Filming something that needs both a landscape edit and a reel? Record in 4K with the subject centred. Both versions can then come from one clip, and the reel stays sharp.

1. Set the project to 1080 × 1920 at the frame rate you filmed, anywhere from 24 to 60 fps.
2. Export an MP4 with H.264 video. H.265 also meets Meta’s API documentation if a tool will publish it.
3. Use AAC audio at 48 kHz and at least 128 kbps.
4. Going through a scheduler? Make sure the reel runs between 3 and 90 seconds.
5. Before posting, watch the export on a phone and stop on every title or subtitle to check that it sits above the bottom 35% and clear of the right-hand buttons.

The same 1080 × 1920 file also suits an Instagram reel, since both apps use a 9:16 frame. Their length rules and overlays are not identical, so check text placement in each app before posting the same cut to both.