Instagram Story size and text safe area
The short answer
An Instagram Story is 1080 × 1920 pixels at 9:16, and Meta advises keeping text and logos out of roughly the top and bottom 250 pixels — checked 31 July 2026.
Source: Meta Business Help — Design requirements for Instagram Stories · Last checked · CORROBORATED
Meta publishes 1080 × 1920 at 9:16 for Stories and advises keeping text clear of roughly 250 px at the top and bottom. Meta’s help pages render their body text with JavaScript, so the pixel figures are corroborated from the published guidance rather than quoted from a direct fetch.
Workbench
1080 × 1920 · 9:16
Add your image
Drag a file here, paste from the clipboard, or choose one below. PNG, JPEG and WebP.
Nothing is uploaded. The file is read by this tab only.
Runs on your device. Your image is decoded, cropped and encoded by this browser tab. It is never uploaded, and there is no image-processing service behind this page.
Why this asset is awkward
A Story is the same canvas as a Reel with a much gentler safe zone. The top strip carries your profile row and the segment timer; the bottom carries the reply field and share actions. About 250 pixels at each end, leaving a generous middle that Reels does not get.
That difference matters if you are reusing one design across both. A layout built for a Story will have its bottom third eaten alive as a Reel. This page marks the Story-specific strips so you can compose for them directly, and the focal point you set here carries over to the Reel tool if you switch.
Exact specification
| Asset | Pixels | Ratio | Formats | File limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram Story | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 | png, jpeg | Not published |
This one page also answers: instagram story dimensions, instagram story aspect ratio, ig story size. They describe the same asset, so they share a single URL rather than getting a thin page each.
What the overlays mean
The clear middle band is the area Meta recommends for text and logos on a 1080 × 1920 Story — everything outside the top and bottom 250-pixel strips. Stickers, polls and link buttons also tend to land near the bottom, so treat that strip as fully spoken for.
- Story text safe areakeep content here
- Meta recommends keeping text and logos out of roughly the top 250 px and bottom 250 px of a 1080 × 1920 Story, where the profile row, timer and reply bar sit.
- Reply barcovered
- The bottom strip carries the reply field and share actions.
Three things that go wrong
- 01
Do not stack text against the reply bar
A caption sitting just above the bottom edge collides with the reply field on most phones and is unreadable on any device with a home indicator.
- 02
Fill the ratio rather than letterboxing
A landscape photo dropped into a Story leaves white bars. Use the blurred-background fill on this page — it produces the padded look Instagram’s own editor makes, but at full resolution.
- 03
One Story, one message
Stories are watched at speed with a thumb hovering over the screen. If your design needs two sentences to work, it is a carousel post, not a Story.
Questions people actually ask
What is the Instagram Story size?
1080 × 1920 pixels, a 9:16 vertical ratio. Instagram accepts other ratios and pads or crops them, but 1080 × 1920 is the only size that fills a phone screen exactly.
How much of an Instagram Story is covered by the interface?
Roughly the top 250 pixels and the bottom 250 pixels of a 1080 × 1920 frame — about 13% at each end. That leaves a tall central band that is safe for text on essentially every phone.
Is the Story safe zone the same as the Reels safe zone?
No, and this trips people up constantly. Reels reserve about 35% of the bottom against a Story’s 13%, because Reels carry a caption, audio row and action rail that Stories do not. A design that is safe as a Story is often unsafe as a Reel.
Can I post a landscape photo as a Story?
You can, but Instagram will either pad it with a background or crop it to fit. Doing the fill yourself gives a better result: this page offers a solid colour or a blurred copy of your own image as the background, at full 1080 × 1920 resolution.
More Instagram sizes
The same job on other platforms
Need several of these at once? The One Image to Social Pack takes a single focal point and exports every destination you choose as one ZIP with a manifest.