Instagram carousel size: the dimensions that actually work

The sizes, straight up

Instagram works with a width of 1080 pixels. What changes is the height:

• 1080 × 1350 (4:5, portrait) — today's feed default, and the one that fills the most screen.
• 1080 × 1080 (1:1, square) — works, but gives you less height.
• 1080 × 566 (1.91:1, landscape) — the smallest in the feed; fine for a link preview, almost never for a carousel.
• 1080 × 1920 (9:16) — that's Stories and Reels, not a feed carousel.

If you're picking just one, pick 1080 × 1350.

Why portrait wins

It isn't taste, it's area. On a phone, a 4:5 card takes up almost a third more screen than a square — and screen taken up is scrolling time stopped on your post.

Since the feed is vertical and people scroll with a thumb, every pixel of height is another half second of attention. It's the cheapest difference there is between two carousels with the same words.

The crop that eats your text

The classic mistake is building the card at one size and publishing at another. Because every slide inherits the first slide's ratio, a square card inside a 4:5 carousel gets stretched or cropped — and what goes first is always the margin, which is where the text usually sits.

Two safety margins that solve almost everything:

• No important text in the top 10% or the bottom 10%. That's where the profile name, the caption and the interface buttons sit on top of your card.
• No text flush against the sides. About 60 pixels of breathing room at 1080 wide keeps a line from touching the edge when the card gets reframed.

Export at the right size

Exporting straight to 1080 × 1350 beats exporting large and letting Instagram shrink it: its recompression is rough on thin text, and that's where letters go soft.

If the carousel has small text, PNG holds the edge of a letter better than JPG. And if one slide moves, it becomes a video — the carousel accepts the mix, as long as the ratio stays the same.