Instagram image file size limits

The answer depends on how the file reaches Instagram. Posting from the app, you are limited by pixels rather than megabytes. A scheduling tool posts through Meta’s Content Publishing API, which has firm file rules, and ads follow a third set of figures in Meta’s ads guide.

Some size guides blur the lines. Sprout Social, for one, lists an 8 MB maximum for feed and carousel posts, the same figure as Meta’s API, next to JPG and PNG. And 30 MB, another number quoted for Instagram photos, is the figure in Meta’s ads guide; we found no Meta page applying it to ordinary posts.

Instagram’s help centre describes its processing entirely in pixels. A photo between 320 and 1,080 pixels wide keeps its resolution, as long as its shape is between 1.91:1 and 3:4. A wider photo is reduced to 1,080 pixels, a narrower one is enlarged to 320, and file size isn’t mentioned at all.

So most of the megabytes in a big camera file pay for pixels Instagram discards. A 4000 × 3000 photo becomes 1080 × 810 in the feed, about a fourteenth of its original pixel count. A 1080 × 1440 export already holds every pixel Instagram will keep, and even uncompressed that is only about 4.7 MB of image data.

Tip: Posting from your phone? Switch on “Upload at highest quality”, under Your app and media, then Media quality, in the app’s settings. Instagram’s help article on reels notes that uploading at higher quality may take longer.

Scheduling tools can’t bend Meta’s rules: the API takes JPEG images only, of 8 MB at most, from 320 to 1,440 pixels wide, in shapes from 4:5 to 1.91:1, in sRGB. A file that breaks a rule is refused or has to be altered by the tool, so it is safer to export a copy that meets them yourself.

1. Resize to 1,080 px wide, or 1,440 at most. That step alone takes almost any photo far below 8 MB.
2. Save as JPEG. PNG, HEIC and WebP files don’t qualify, and iPhones save photos as HEIC by default.
3. Use a high quality setting, around 80 to 90 on a 0 to 100 scale; settings near 100 add megabytes with little visible gain.
4. Convert to sRGB, the colour space Meta lists, if your camera or editor works in a wider one.
5. Check the shape. The API stops at 4:5, so a 3:4 phone photo needs cropping to 1080 × 1350 first.

A carousel doesn’t share one allowance between its slides. The 8 MB cap applies to each image on its own, and through the API a carousel holds up to 10 items.

Through the API, a reel can be up to 300 MB and a Story video up to 100 MB. To find the highest average bitrate that fits, multiply the cap in megabytes by 8 and divide by the length in seconds.

Those averages include the sound. Meta lists 128 kbps for reel audio, a small slice of the total, so set the video a little lower to leave room. Ads have far more space: video ad files can be up to 4 GB, enough for about 9 Mbps across a full 60-minute video.

Instagram processes every upload, resizing anything outside its width range and compressing the result again, and it doesn’t publish the settings it uses. You can’t switch that off, but you can stop adding damage of your own before the file arrives.

• Re-uploading a copy saved from Instagram, a chat app or a screenshot. Each copy has already been compressed, and the next upload compresses it again.
• Sending a small file. Under 1,080 px wide there is less detail to keep, and under 320 px Instagram enlarges the image.
• Exporting graphics as low-quality JPEGs, which leaves blotches around lettering before Instagram’s own pass.
• Posting dim, grainy photos. Noise is hard to compress, so it tends to come out smeared or blocky.
• Editing a JPEG, saving it and editing it again. Work from the original and export once at the end.

PNG is a fine choice in the app for graphics with sharp lettering, since your file starts clean. What people see, though, is Instagram’s processed copy, so a PNG mainly protects you from your own compression rather than Instagram’s.