What Are Instagram Story Dimensions?

James Orublig / Updated 7 February 2025 10:49 am / 2 minute

Instagram Story Dimensions and File Formats

Instagram Stories are an essential feature for content creators, influencers, and businesses looking to engage their audience in a dynamic and immersive way. However, to ensure the best visual quality and seamless user experience, it’s crucial to follow Instagram’s specific guidelines for story dimensions, file formats, and sizes.

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Instagram Story Dimensions

The ideal dimensions for an Instagram Story are 1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels tall, which follows a 9:16 aspect ratio. This means that your story—whether it’s an image or a video—should be designed in this resolution to avoid distortion, cropping, or zooming when uploaded.

Supported Image and Video File Formats

When uploading images to your Instagram Story, you should use either PNG or JPG file formats. These are the only image formats Instagram officially supports. Additionally, the maximum file size for an Instagram Story image is 30MB.

For videos, Instagram Stories support file formats such as MP4 and MOV, with a recommended frame rate of 30 FPS and a bitrate of at least 5,000 kbps. The maximum file size for IGTV videos is 4GB, while stories should be kept at a reasonable size for smooth uploading.

Why Following Instagram’s Story Size Guidelines Matters

When the users on their Instagram story share a photo or video of the right size, the content will look perfect. Therefore, Instagram story dimensions have importance on the platform. If you upload content that doesn’t fit the required 1080×1920 resolution, Instagram will automatically crop, zoom, or resize it to match the correct format. This can lead to unwanted loss of quality, blurriness, or important parts of your image/video being cut off.

To avoid these issues:

Always design your content using the 9:16 aspect ratio.
Keep text and key visuals away from the edges to prevent cropping.
Use high-resolution images and videos to maintain clarity.
Compress files properly to stay within size limits while keeping quality intact.

By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your Instagram Stories look professional, clear, and engaging—maximizing their impact on your audience! Also If you want to see which stories your competitors have posted best, don’t forget to check out the Instagram Story Viewer tool.

Frequently Asked Questions About

What if you upload the content of an inappropriate size?

Instagram is really strict in this case. When you upload content of inappropriate size, your content will be cut or zoomed by the platform.

How can you prevent image distortion on Instagram stories?

You have to make sure that your content is the right size, so there won’t be image distortion.

How to use Instagram stories?

You can promote your business profile and your brand. According to the statistics, Instagram stories are viewed three times than regular posts. For this reason, you can obtain more customers for your brand. The main reason is that the user on the platform can have more information in a short time, and the photos or videos on the stories look brighter than the regular posts.

James Orublig

Posts: 391

Hi, my name is James but my friend calls me JamesTheNews since I always have the latest news about social media. Follow my blogs to learn every bit of trickery there is to social media.