Social Media Video Sizes in 2026: TikTok, Reels, Shorts
Oct 14, 2026 • 12 minute read
Wildan
Social media video sizes in 2026 come down to three shapes: vertical 9:16 for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, 16:9 at 1920 x 1080 for regular YouTube, and square or 4:5 for the LinkedIn, Instagram and X feeds. Every number below comes from the platform's own help or ads pages, linked inline. Where a platform doesn't publish a number, or two of its own pages disagree, this post says so instead of guessing.
Social media video sizes at a glance
| Platform | Aspect ratio | Pixel size | Max length |
|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok | 9:16 recommended (16:9 and 1:1 accepted for ads) | At least 540 x 960 for ads; shoot at least 720p | Up to 10 minutes for In-Feed ads |
| Instagram Reels | 9:16 (uploads from 1.91:1 to 9:16) | 1440 x 2560 for Reels ads; at least 720 px | 20 minutes; over 3 minutes isn't recommended to new audiences |
| Instagram feed | 1:1 or 4:5 for feed ads; Meta's feed video ad guide lists 9:16 | 1080 x 1920 in Meta's feed video ad guide | 1 second to 60 minutes for feed video ads |
| YouTube Shorts | Vertical or square | Up to 1080p | 3 minutes |
| YouTube (long-form) | 16:9 | 1920 x 1080 (1080p) or 3840 x 2160 (4K) | Not covered by the pages cited here |
| LinkedIn feed video | Anything from 1:2.4 to 2.4:1; 4:5 recommended for ads | 256 x 144 to 4096 x 2304; 4:5 ads max 1080 x 1350 | 15 minutes (posts), 30 minutes (ads) |
| X | 1:1 or 16:9 recommended for ads; uploads from 1:2.39 to 2.39:1 | 1200 x 1200 (1:1) or 1920 x 1080 (16:9) for ads | 140 seconds without Premium; 2:20 for ads |
If you only make one file, make it 9:16. It fills the screen on TikTok, Reels and Shorts, and LinkedIn and X both accept it. If you can make two, add a 16:9 version for YouTube and your website.
TikTok video size
TikTok's video ad specifications (last updated June 2026) list three shapes for In-Feed ads:
- Vertical (recommended): 9:16, at least 540 x 960 px
- Horizontal: 16:9, at least 960 x 540 px
- Square: 1:1, at least 640 x 640 px
In-Feed ads can run up to 10 minutes and be up to 500 MB, as .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp or .avi. TikTok's creative best practices add two things: orient vertically at 9:16, and shoot at "at least 720P resolution."
Safe zone: TikTok doesn't give a fixed margin. The spec page says the safe zone "is determined by the dimension (vertical, horizontal, or square)," along with caption length and any extra ad formats, and offers downloadable safe zone files. In practice, the caption and account name sit along the bottom and the like, comment and share buttons run down the right edge, so keep text and the important part of your screen away from both.
What's missing: the pages above are TikTok's ads docs. TikTok's support site for regular posts didn't load when we checked, so we couldn't confirm the upload length or file size limit for organic posts from a TikTok page. The upload screen in TikTok Studio shows the limit for your account.
Instagram Reels size
Instagram's help page on Reel size and aspect ratios says you can upload a reel "with an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 9:16," at a minimum of 720 pixels and 30 FPS. It doesn't give a recommended pixel size. Anything other than 9:16 won't fill the phone screen.
For Reels ads, Meta's Ads Guide recommends 9:16 at 1440 x 2560 pixels, up to 4 GB, 0 seconds to 15 minutes. Many guides quote 1080 x 1920 for Reels; Meta's Reels ad page asks for 1440 x 2560. Both are 9:16, so a 1080 x 1920 file has the right shape.
Length: Instagram's help page says you can record and edit reels up to 20 minutes, with one caveat: "Reels over 3 minutes won't be recommended to new audiences."
Safe zone: Meta does publish this one. Its Reels ad guide says to "consider leaving at least 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom, and 6% on each side of your asset free from text, logos, or other important creative elements," so the profile icon and call to action don't cover them. On a 1080 x 1920 frame, that's about 270 px at the top, 670 px at the bottom and 65 px on each side.
Instagram feed video size
This is where Meta's own pages disagree.
- Meta's best practices for aspect ratios says that for feed placements "both 1:1 and 4:5 aspect ratios are supported for both images and videos."
- Meta's Ads Guide for Instagram feed video lists one ratio, 9:16, at 1080 x 1920 pixels, 1 second to 60 minutes, up to 4 GB.
Neither page gives a pixel size for a 4:5 feed video. If you're resizing a video for Instagram, the safe choice is to post the 9:16 file as a reel (it fills the screen there) and use 4:5 or 1:1 only when you specifically want it to sit in the feed at a fixed shape.
YouTube Shorts size
YouTube's help page on three-minute Shorts sets the rule: a video uploaded after October 15, 2024 counts as a Short if it has a "square or vertical aspect ratio" and runs up to three minutes. Wider video, such as 16:9, is treated as long-form.
YouTube's Shorts guide adds: "You can upload Short videos with a maximum resolution of 1080p." For a 9:16 Short, that means 1080 x 1920.
Safe zone: YouTube doesn't publish pixel margins for Shorts. Instead, the Shorts editor shows guides for "where elements like the like button, comments, and video description might appear for viewers," and flags a "non-safe" area when you drag text too close to the edge.
YouTube video size (16:9)
YouTube's page on resolution and aspect ratios says "the standard aspect ratio for YouTube on a computer is 16:9," and lists resolutions from 240p up to 8K, including 1080p at 1920 x 1080 and 4K at 3840 x 2160. Upload other shapes and the player resizes to fit, adding padding around 9:16 video in desktop browsers. YouTube advises against adding black bars to the video yourself.
LinkedIn video size and aspect ratio
LinkedIn has two sets of numbers, and they don't match.
Regular posts. LinkedIn's video sharing help page lists:
- Aspect ratio: 1:2.4 to 2.4:1
- Resolution: 256 x 144 to 4096 x 2304
- Length: 3 seconds (desktop) or 2 seconds (mobile app) to 15 minutes
- File size: 75 KB to 5 GB, 10 to 60 fps
That page sets limits but doesn't recommend a shape. So for a regular post, there is no official "best" LinkedIn video aspect ratio, only the allowed range.
Ads. LinkedIn's video ad specs do recommend one: vertical 4:5.
| LinkedIn ad shape | Recommended | Range |
|---|---|---|
| 16:9 | 1920 x 1080 or 1200 x 675 | 640 x 360 to 1920 x 1080 |
| 1:1 | not stated | 360 x 360 to 1920 x 1920 |
| 4:5 (recommended) | 720 x 900 | 360 x 450 to 1080 x 1350 |
| 9:16 | 720 x 1280 | 360 x 640 to 1080 x 1920 |
Ads run 3 seconds to 30 minutes, as MP4 between 75 KB and 500 MB, with a frame rate "less than 30 FPS." LinkedIn recommends 15 to 30 seconds so an ad qualifies for every placement. Neither LinkedIn page documents a safe zone.
X (Twitter) video aspect ratio and size
X publishes three different sets of numbers.
Posting from the web. X's video help page lists a minimum of 32 x 32, a maximum of "1920 x 1200 (and 1200 x 1900)," aspect ratios from 1:2.39 to 2.39:1, and up to 40 fps. Without Premium, videos can be up to 140 seconds and 512 MB. Premium subscribers can upload up to 4 hours.
Ads. X's ad specs recommend 1200 x 1200 for 1:1 and 1920 x 1080 for 16:9, and also list 9:16 at 1080 x 1920, 4:5 at 1440 x 1800 and 2:3 at 1080 x 1620. Ads can run up to 2:20, with "15 seconds or less" recommended, up to 1 GB as MP4 or MOV.
The API. X's developer docs recommend 1280 x 720, 720 x 1280 or 720 x 720, and require a resolution between 32 x 32 and 1280 x 1024 and a ratio between 1:3 and 3:1.
These overlap but don't agree. A 1080 x 1920 vertical video is listed in the ad specs, yet it's taller than the 1900 px web maximum in the help page. If you post from the web, square 1080 x 1080 or 16:9 1920 x 1080 sit inside every set of limits. X doesn't document a safe zone for feed video.
How to change a video's aspect ratio
Most demo videos start as a 16:9 screen recording. Turning one into 9:16 (or 4:5, or 1:1) means choosing what to give up. There are four ways to do it.
1. Fit with bars (letterbox). Shrink the whole 16:9 frame into the 9:16 one and fill the rest with a color or blur. Nothing is cut, but on a 1080 x 1920 frame your video becomes a 1080 x 608 strip, about a third of the screen. On a phone, UI text that size is hard to read. It's the fastest fix and usually the worst-looking one.
2. Center crop. Cut a 9:16 window out of the middle and scale it up. From a 1920 x 1080 recording, a full-height 9:16 window is about 608 px wide, so you keep roughly 32% of the width and lose the rest. Sidebars, menus and anything near the edges are gone, and the remaining 608 px get stretched to 1080, so it looks softer. Cropping to 1:1 keeps about 56% of the width, and 4:5 keeps about 45%, which is why square and 4:5 crops often work where 9:16 doesn't.
3. Reframe (moving crop). Keep the crop but move it over time to follow the cursor, the click or the field being typed in. You keep the action instead of the middle. The tradeoffs: the context around the action is still gone, the camera motion can feel jumpy if it moves on every click, and if two things happen on opposite sides of the screen at once, one of them is out of frame.
4. Re-layout. Rebuild the video for the new shape instead of cutting the old one. For a product demo, that usually means zooming into the one panel that matters, stacking it with a title or caption above and below, and moving text out of the platform's UI areas. It looks native to the feed and keeps the UI readable. The cost is time: it's a new edit for each shape, not a setting.
Whichever you pick, check the result against the safe zones above. A 9:16 crop that's fine in the editor can still lose its key line under the Reels caption or the TikTok buttons.
What Demo Editor outputs. Demo Editor makes one file per destination: 1080 x 1920 for TikTok, Instagram (as a reel) and YouTube (as a Short), 1080 x 1350 (4:5) for LinkedIn, 1080 x 1080 for X, which Threads and Reddit also get, and 1920 x 1080 for your website. It crops from the middle when that fits and lays the video out again when a crop would cut too much. Two of these differ from the platforms' recommendations: X's ad specs recommend 1200 x 1200 for square, and there's no separate 4:5 Instagram feed file. The full list is on the features page.
Frequently asked questions
What size is an Instagram Reel?
9:16. Instagram accepts reels with an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 9:16 and at least 720 pixels, and Meta's Reels ad guide recommends 1440 x 2560 pixels. Keep the top 14%, bottom 35% and 6% on each side free of text, per Meta's Reels ad guide.
What is the TikTok video size?
9:16 vertical. TikTok's ad specs ask for at least 540 x 960 pixels for vertical video, and its creative best practices say to shoot at least 720p. TikTok also accepts 16:9 and 1:1 for In-Feed ads, but only 9:16 fills the screen.
What size is a YouTube Short?
A YouTube Short is any square or vertical video up to three minutes long, uploaded at a maximum of 1080p. For a 9:16 Short, that's 1080 x 1920 pixels. A 16:9 video is treated as a regular long-form upload instead.
What aspect ratio is best for LinkedIn video?
4:5 for LinkedIn ads, which LinkedIn's ad specs mark as recommended, at 720 x 900 up to 1080 x 1350 pixels. For regular LinkedIn posts, LinkedIn only gives an allowed range, 1:2.4 to 2.4:1, and doesn't recommend one shape.
What is the Twitter (X) video aspect ratio?
X recommends 1:1 at 1200 x 1200 or 16:9 at 1920 x 1080 for video ads. Its help page allows uploads from 1:2.39 to 2.39:1, up to 1920 x 1200 pixels from the web.
How do I convert a horizontal video to vertical?
Crop, reframe or re-layout it. A center crop from 16:9 to 9:16 keeps only about a third of the width, so reframing (moving the crop to follow the action) or re-laying out the video (zooming into the key panel and adding text above and below) usually keeps a screen recording readable. Fitting the whole frame with bars cuts nothing but leaves the video small on a phone.
How do I resize a video for Instagram without cropping?
Fit it inside a 9:16 frame with bars or a blurred background, or post it at its own shape if it's between 1.91:1 and 9:16, which Instagram accepts for reels. Either way nothing is cut, but anything wider than 9:16 won't fill the screen.
If you'd rather not crop, reframe and check safe zones by hand for every feed, Demo Editor makes a file for each one from the same video. See the formats.