Instagram Reel Size (2026): 1080×1920, 9:16

The Instagram Reel size is 1080×1920 pixels, a 9:16 vertical frame. Instagram accepts anything from 1.91:1 to 9:16, as long as it's at least 720p and 30 frames per second, but only 9:16 fills the screen. If your Reels look soft after posting, the size probably isn't the problem. A setting is, and it's further down.

Instagram Reel dimensions at a glance

How I export mine

Portrait, every time. I don't post square or horizontal Reels at all: 9:16, 1080×1920, nothing clever.

If a clip is going to be a Reel, set the vertical frame before you edit rather than at export. A shot composed wide rarely survives being cut down to tall. And once the export is right, what decides how the Reel looks when it's live is a setting on Instagram's side.

Turn on Upload at highest quality

This is the one that got me. Instagram compresses everything you upload, and unless you tell it otherwise it can squeeze a Reel harder to get it up faster. Mine came out lower quality than the file I exported until I switched on Upload at highest quality.

Instagram's own Reels resolution page describes the switch and warns that higher-quality uploads take longer. Instagram moves its menus around, so the quickest way to it is the search box at the top of the app's settings: type "highest quality".

Turn it on once and forget it. If you only change one thing after reading this, make it this.

The Reels safe zone: where captions get hidden

Instagram draws its interface on top of your video: your handle, the caption and the audio line along the bottom, and like, comment, share and save down the right edge. Text in those strips is still in the video. Nobody can read it.

Mine have been hidden there. Not when I keep to the safe area, though, and that's the fix: decide where the clear box is before you place a single caption.

On a 1080×1920 frame, a safe set of margins is about 180px off the top, 420px off the bottom, 60px off the left and 160px off the right. That leaves a 860×1320 box in the middle. Those numbers are the Reels preset in Leaxor's safe zone checker (quick flag: Leaxor is mine, so weigh what I say about it with that in mind), and they're deliberately cautious community measurements. Instagram doesn't publish them, and the overlay moves a little with long captions and different phones. Drop a frame into the checker and it shows what the app would cover, or download the overlay and put it on a layer in your editor.

The bottom margin is the one people underestimate. A two-line caption pushes the text block up, so leave more room than looks necessary.

Centre your captions rather than left-aligning them. The right margin is more than twice the left one, so a caption hugging the left edge looks lopsided once the buttons sit on top of the video, and a long line runs straight into them. Centred text in the middle third of the frame dodges both, and it's where the eye already is.

Cover size and the 3:4 profile grid

Make the cover 1080×1920, same as the Reel. Then remember it won't be shown that way on your profile. Since Instagram switched to a vertical profile grid in January 2025 (Storyboard18 covered the update), each tile is a 3:4 crop, 1080×1440. That trims 240 pixels off the top and 240 off the bottom.

So put the face and any title in the middle of the cover. A headline sitting high in the frame is the classic casualty. If you're building covers from a still, the image cropper will show you the 3:4 window first.

Horizontal and square Reels

Instagram will take a 16:9 or 1:1 video. In the full-screen Reels feed it just doesn't fill the screen, so you get a strip of video in a sea of nothing. For a clip that has to be vertical, there are two options: crop it and lose the sides, or extend it.

Cropping is free and usually fine for a talking head. It's bad for a wide shot, where the action is often at the edges. Extending is what I'd do for anything wide. Leaxor's Reframe paints in the area above and below a wide shot instead of cropping it, and keeps the footage and sound as they were. It handles sources up to 5 minutes and 7 shapes, and a 30-second clip costs $7.20 today.

Export settings in CapCut, Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve

The settings are the same everywhere. Only the menu names change.

• CapCut: set the project ratio to 9:16 before you start, then export at 1080p and 30fps. I edit in CapCut. Set the ratio first: change it halfway through and you're repositioning everything you've already placed.
• Premiere Pro: make a custom sequence at 1080×1920 with square pixels, or let the Auto Reframe sequence build one. Export H.264 at the same size.
• DaVinci Resolve: in project settings, set the timeline resolution to 1080×1920 (or tick the vertical option), and render at that size.

Whatever the editor, keep the frame rate at 30fps or above. Instagram's help page lists 30 as the minimum.

How long a Reel can be

Three minutes. Adam Mosseri raised the limit from 90 seconds in January 2025 (Social Media Today has the announcement). That's a ceiling, not a target. The same pacing rules from my video editing tips apply: start on the action and cut anything that doesn't earn its seconds.

If you're making the footage rather than filming it, generate it vertical from the start. 21 of the 23 clip models in the AI video generator render 9:16, which skips the reframing step entirely.

A 30-second check before you post

Do it with the export open on your phone. A laptop screen hides every one of these problems.

• Is it 1080×1920? Check the exported file itself, not just the project settings.
• Is Upload at highest quality on? On a new phone or a fresh install, check it before the first post.
• Does every caption sit inside the safe box? Especially the last line of a two-line caption, which is the one that drifts into the bottom strip.
• Does the cover still work at 3:4? Cover the top and bottom eighth of it with your thumbs. If the title disappears, move it.
• Is anything important on the right edge? That's where the like, comment and share buttons stack up.