Instagram Video Size Guide: Dimensions, Length and Quality

Instagram re-encodes everything you upload. You can’t avoid that, but you can control how much damage it does — most quality loss comes from uploading a file that forces Instagram to resize and re-compress, rather than just re-compress.

Here’s what to export.

Aspect ratios by surface

Surface	Ratio	Resolution
Reels	9:16	1080 × 1920
Stories	9:16	1080 × 1920
Feed video (portrait)	4:5	1080 × 1350
Feed video (square)	1:1	1080 × 1080
Feed video (landscape)	1.91:1	1080 × 566
Carousel	Match across slides	1080 wide

Two rules that matter more than the numbers:

Export at 1080px on the short edge. Instagram’s pipeline is built around 1080. Uploading 4K doesn’t get you a better result — it gets downscaled by Instagram’s encoder, which is worse at it than your editing software.

Keep carousel slides consistent. Mixing ratios in one carousel means Instagram crops to fit the first slide. Pick 4:5 or 1:1 and apply it to every slide.

Safe zones

Reels and Stories put interface elements over your video. Anything important needs to sit inside the middle band:

• Top ~14% — profile name, close button
• Bottom ~20% — caption, audio label, action buttons
• Right edge ~10% — like, comment, share column

For a 1080 × 1920 canvas, keep text and faces roughly within the central 1080 × 1250 area. Losing a caption behind the share button is the single most common avoidable mistake.

Length limits

• Reels — up to 3 minutes
• Stories — 60 seconds per frame, split automatically beyond that
• Feed video — up to 60 minutes on paper, though anything long performs poorly
• Carousel video slides — 60 seconds each

Limits have changed repeatedly, so check in-app if you’re near a boundary. In practice the useful number is much lower than the maximum: most well-performing Reels are well under 60 seconds, because completion rate is a ranking signal and short videos complete.

Export settings that hold up

For Reels and Stories:

Container:   MP4
Video codec: H.264 (High profile)
Resolution:  1080 × 1920
Frame rate:  30 fps (or match your source)
Bitrate:     10–15 Mbps
Audio:       AAC, 128–256 kbps, 48 kHz
Color:       Rec.709, 8-bit

Notes on the choices:

H.264 over H.265. Instagram accepts HEVC but handling is less consistent across devices. H.264 is the safe default.

Bitrate above what you think you need. Instagram will compress your file regardless. Giving its encoder a clean, high-bitrate source produces a better final result than giving it something already squeezed. There’s no benefit past roughly 15 Mbps at 1080p.

Don’t upload HDR or 10-bit unless you’ve tested it. Tone mapping frequently produces washed-out or oversaturated results.

Match your source frame rate. Converting 24 fps footage to 30 fps introduces judder. If you shot 24, export 24.

File size

There’s no single published cap that holds across every surface and app version, but practical guidance:

• Keep Reels under about 100 MB
• Under 50 MB uploads noticeably more reliably on mobile data
• Very large files sometimes fail silently or get aggressively re-encoded

At 1080p with a 12 Mbps bitrate, a 60-second Reel lands around 90 MB. That’s fine. A 3-minute Reel at the same bitrate is around 270 MB, which is where you should drop to 8–10 Mbps.

Photos and carousels

• Long edge 1080px is what Instagram stores. Larger gets downscaled.
• JPEG at high quality (90+) or PNG for graphics with text and flat colour
• sRGB colour space. Adobe RGB or ProPhoto will shift visibly.
• 4:5 portrait takes the most feed real estate and generally performs best

Why your upload looked worse than your export

Usually one of these:

1. Wrong dimensions. Instagram had to resize as well as compress.
2. Uploaded over a weak connection. Some app versions degrade quality to complete the upload. Post on Wi-Fi.
3. Saved from another app first. Each round trip re-compresses. Always upload from your editor’s export, never from a re-download.
4. Data-saver enabled. Under Settings → Data usage, check that high-quality uploads are on.
5. Screenshot or screen-recorded source. Already lossy before you started.

Point 3 is worth dwelling on if you post the same content across platforms. Downloading your Reel to re-upload elsewhere means the second platform compresses an already-compressed file. Export separately from your editor for each destination.

If you no longer have the original — an old post, a file lost in a phone migration — pulling the published version down is a reasonable fallback. InDownloader gives you the best copy Instagram stores, which is better than a screen recording, though it’s still Instagram’s compressed version rather than your master.

Quick checklist

Before you export:

• 1080px on the short edge
• Correct ratio for the surface
• Text and faces inside the safe zone
• H.264 MP4, AAC audio
• Source frame rate preserved
• sRGB / Rec.709, 8-bit
• Under 100 MB
• Uploading on Wi-Fi from the original export