Design4 min read
Facebook Image Sizes That Survive the Feed
Facebook image size by placement: feed posts, link cards, Stories, cover photos and ads - plus the crops that differ between desktop and mobile.
The Facebook image size to use for a feed post is 1080×1350 (4:5) or 1080×1080 (square); a link preview card is 1200×630. Facebook crops differently on desktop and mobile, and the cover photo is the worst offender — its visible region changes shape entirely between the two.
Facebook image size, by placement
| Placement | Ratio | Export |
|---|---|---|
| Feed, portrait | 4:5 | 1080×1350 |
| Feed, square | 1:1 | 1080×1080 |
| Link preview card | ~1.91:1 | 1200×630 |
| Stories and Reels | 9:16 | 1080×1920 |
| Page cover photo | Varies desktop vs mobile | 1640×856, subject centred |
| Profile picture | 1:1 | 320×320 or larger |
| Event cover | ~1.91:1 | 1200×628 |
FreeMentioned in this article
Social Image ResizerOne image, cropped to every size the networks actually use.Meta publishes creative specifications for its advertising placements (Meta Business Help), and organic posts use the same geometry — which makes the ads specs a useful reference even if you never buy an ad.
The cover photo problem
A Page cover is displayed wide on desktop and considerably narrower on a phone, with different amounts cropped from the top and bottom. There is no single export that fills both perfectly.
The only reliable approach is to treat the centre as the design and the edges as padding: put everything meaningful in the middle 1000 pixels or so, horizontally and vertically, and let the platform take whatever it wants from the outside. Text near an edge will be missing for half your audience.
Link cards are built from the linked page
Share a URL and Facebook builds the card from that page's Open Graph tags. Two consequences worth internalising:
- Attaching an image to the post does not change the card. The card comes from
the page.
- Facebook caches the card hard. Fix the page and the old image can persist,
sometimes for a long time.
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Link Preview DebuggerWhat X, Facebook and LinkedIn will show when you share your link.FreeMentioned in this article
Facebook Post PreviewWhere the feed cuts your post — and it is earlier with a photo attached.The debugger reads the page once and renders the card as Facebook draws it; the post preview shows the whole post in feed and mobile layouts. If a card is stuck showing the old image, that is a cache problem with a specific fix: Facebook link preview not updating. The tags themselves are covered in Open Graph tags.
Text in images, and the ads inheritance
Facebook historically penalised ad images with more than 20% text coverage. The hard rule has gone, but the underlying behaviour has not: text-heavy images perform worse in a feed, because a feed is a scanning environment and a wall of small text is something to scroll past.
The practical version of the old rule is still good advice — if the image needs a paragraph to work, the paragraph belongs in the post text, where it is selectable, translatable and readable by a screen reader.
Ad copy has its own hard limits, and they truncate earlier than most people expect:
FreeMentioned in this article
Facebook Ad Text CounterPrimary text, headline and description — checked against what actually displays.Why Facebook's crops differ from everyone else's
Facebook is older than the vertical-feed era and carries the consequences. It runs a desktop layout and a mobile layout that were designed years apart, with different column widths, and it renders the same asset in both. Instagram, built mobile-first, never had to reconcile that.
The practical result is that Facebook is the one network where "design for the centre" is not a stylistic preference but a requirement. A cover photo, an event header and even a shared link card are each cropped differently depending on where they are seen, and no single export satisfies every case.
So the working method for Facebook assets is:
- Compose in the middle. Assume the outer 15% of every edge may be missing.
- Never put text at an edge. Not a caption, not a logo, not a URL.
- Check the mobile crop, not the desktop one. Most impressions are on a phone,
and the mobile crop is the tighter of the two.
- Use the post text for anything that must be read. Text in an image is not
selectable, not translatable and not accessible.
Stories and Reels follow the vertical rules
9:16, with the interface covering the top and bottom bands — the same geometry as every other vertical feed.
FreeMentioned in this article
Safe Zone GuideWhere each app’s buttons will cover your frame, in pixels.Detail: safe zones on social media. The full cross-network ratio table is social media image sizes.
What is the best image size for a Facebook post?
1080×1350 at 4:5 for the most feed space, or 1080×1080 square if you want a predictable crop everywhere.
What size should a Facebook link preview image be?
1200×630. It is read from the linked page's Open Graph tags rather than from anything you attach to the post.
What size is a Facebook cover photo?
Around 1640×856, but the visible region differs between desktop and mobile. Keep everything important in the centre.
Does Facebook still have a 20% text rule for images?
Not as a hard rejection. Text-heavy images still perform poorly in the feed, so the guidance survives even though the rule does not.
Produce every Facebook placement from one image with the social image resizer.
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Tools for the job you just read about
Free to run, most of them without an account.
FreeImages & video
Social Image Resizer
One image, cropped to every size the networks actually use.
Resize →
FreePreviews
Link Preview Debugger
What X, Facebook and LinkedIn will show when you share your link.
Preview the URL →11 runs
FreePreviews
Facebook Post Preview
Where the feed cuts your post — and it is earlier with a photo attached.
Preview →3 runs
FreeContent
Facebook Ad Text Counter
Primary text, headline and description — checked against what actually displays.
Count →
FreePreviews
Safe Zone Guide
Where each app’s buttons will cover your frame, in pixels.
Show safe zones →
FreePreviews
Google SERP Snippet Preview
See your title and description as a Google result — on a desktop and a phone.
Preview →5 runs
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