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If you've ever uploaded a profile picture only to find it looks blurry, weirdly cropped, or completely different from what you saw on your desktop — you're not alone. Every major social platform has its own image size requirements, and most of them display your photos differently depending on whether someone's viewing on mobile or desktop.
The good news? Once you know the numbers, it's actually pretty straightforward. And with a tool like SocialPreviewing, you can see exactly how your photo will look before you ever hit publish.
Here's the complete breakdown of every social media image size you need in 2026.
Before we get into the numbers, it's worth understanding why getting these right makes such a big difference.
Every social platform compresses the images you upload. They do this to keep load times fast and reduce server costs. The problem is that compression reduces image quality — and if you're already uploading a small or low-resolution image, the final result can look noticeably blurry or pixelated.
The other issue is cropping. Most platforms display profile pictures as circles, which means they're cropping the corners off your square image. If your face or logo isn't perfectly centred, you'll end up with awkward framing that looks unprofessional.
And then there's the mobile vs. desktop problem. Cover photos in particular are displayed at completely different dimensions on mobile vs. desktop. A beautiful banner design that looks great on your MacBook might have key text cut off entirely for anyone viewing on their phone.
Previewing your profile picture before you upload is the simplest way to catch all of these problems before your audience does.
LinkedIn is where first impressions are arguably most important — it's the professional network, after all. Getting your images right here matters more than almost anywhere else.
The recommended LinkedIn profile picture size is 400×400 pixels. It's displayed as a circle across the platform, and your face should fill roughly 60–70% of the frame. Upload as a PNG file for the sharpest result — LinkedIn compresses JPGs more aggressively.
The maximum file size is 8MB, and LinkedIn accepts images up to 7680×4320px, but 400×400 is the sweet spot for quality and load time.
Your LinkedIn background banner should be 1584×396 pixels (4:1 ratio). This is one of the trickier ones because the sides of your banner get cropped on mobile. Keep all important content — your tagline, logo, contact details — within the central 60% of the image to make sure nothing disappears for mobile viewers.
Company logos on LinkedIn should be 300×300 pixels in a square format. The company cover image is a different size from personal banners: 1128×191 pixels.
👉 Read our full LinkedIn profile picture size guide →
Instagram is a visual-first platform, so image quality here directly affects how your brand or personal profile is perceived.
This one surprises a lot of people. Instagram actually displays your profile picture at just 110×110 pixels — tiny. But you should upload at a much higher resolution to account for compression and high-DPI screens.
The minimum upload size is 320×320px, but we recommend uploading at 1080×1080 pixels. Instagram will resize it down, but starting with a high-res file means the final result stays crisp.
Like LinkedIn, Instagram crops profile photos into a tight circle. Keep your subject centred and within the inner 80% of the frame — anything near the edges will be cut off.
One thing to bear in mind: your profile picture appears much smaller in comments and on the Explore page than it does on your actual profile. Make sure it's still recognisable at a tiny size.
For feed posts, the standard sizes are:
Portrait is generally the best choice for engagement since it dominates more of the feed.
Stories and Reels use a full-screen vertical format: 1080×1920 pixels (9:16 ratio).
👉 Read our full Instagram profile picture size guide →
TikTok's growth over the past few years has been staggering, and it's now an essential platform for creators, brands, and businesses of all sizes. Your profile picture appears in a lot of places on TikTok — on your profile, in the For You Page feed, in comments, in search results, and in Duets — so it's worth getting right.
TikTok recommends a profile photo of at least 200×200 pixels. The platform technically accepts images as small as 20×20px, but that will look completely blurry on any modern screen. Upload the largest, highest-quality square image you have.
Like Instagram and LinkedIn, TikTok crops profile photos into a circle. Centre your subject and make sure it fills the frame — at the sizes TikTok displays your photo, a small subject will be completely unrecognisable.
One thing that's unique to TikTok: your profile picture floats over video content in the For You Page. This means it needs to read clearly against both light and dark backgrounds. A clean, high-contrast image works best.
TikTok's primary content format is vertical video: 1080×1920 pixels (9:16 ratio). Video thumbnails (cover images) use the same dimensions.
For TikTok ads, the profile picture in-feed should be 98×98 pixels with a maximum file size of 50KB.
👉 Read our full TikTok profile picture size guide →
Facebook has the most varied image size requirements of any platform, largely because it has so many different types of pages and placements. Here's what you need to know.
The Facebook cover photo is where most people run into trouble. It displays at 820×312 pixels on desktop — but on mobile, it's cropped to 640×360 pixels. That means the left and right edges of your desktop version get cut off on mobile.
The fix: keep all important content within the central 560 pixels of your image. Avoid placing text, logos, or key visuals near the edges.
There's another wrinkle: on desktop, your circular profile picture overlaps the bottom-left corner of your cover photo. Don't put anything important in that area (roughly the bottom-left 200×200px region).
Facebook profile pictures display at 170×170 pixels on desktop and 128×128 pixels on smartphones. Upload at a minimum of 180×180 pixels — Facebook crops them into a circle.
Business page cover photos use the same dimensions as personal profiles: 820×312px. Group cover photos are different: upload at 1640×856 pixels, displayed at 820×428px.
Event cover photos should be 1920×1005 pixels and, importantly, can't be resized after upload — so get the dimensions right before you upload.
👉 Read our full Facebook cover photo size guide →
X still drives significant traffic and conversation for many brands, so it's worth knowing the right dimensions.
Upload your X profile picture at 400×400 pixels. It's displayed as a circle at various sizes across the platform. Like all the others, keep your subject centred.
The X header photo should be 1500×500 pixels (3:1 ratio). Like Facebook and LinkedIn cover photos, it crops differently on mobile — keep key content centred.
For images in tweets, 1200×675 pixels (16:9 ratio) works well across both desktop and mobile. For link preview cards, the recommended size is 1200×628 pixels.
PlatformProfile PictureCover / BannerLinkedIn400×400px1584×396pxInstagram1080×1080px (upload)—TikTok200×200px (min)—Facebook180×180px (min)820×312pxX (Twitter)400×400px1500×500px
The single most common mistake we see is people uploading the minimum required size and then wondering why their image looks blurry.
Here's the thing: social platforms compress every image you upload. They reduce file sizes for faster loading, which reduces quality. If you upload an image at the bare minimum size, you're giving the platform's compression algorithm very little to work with — and the result often looks noticeably soft.
The solution is simple: always upload the highest-quality version of your image that you have. More resolution gives the compression algorithm more to work with, and your final image will look sharper as a result.
Even with the right dimensions, it's hard to know exactly how your image will look until you see it in context — in the circular crop, at the actual display size, on different devices.
That's exactly what SocialPreviewing is built for. Upload your profile picture or cover photo and instantly see how it'll look on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and X — on desktop, tablet, and mobile — before you ever hit publish.
It's free to try, and it takes about 30 seconds. If you're spending time getting your profile right, it's worth the extra step to make sure it actually looks the way you intend.
You can also check out our FAQs about profile picture previews and PFP testing if you have questions about how the tool works.
AI has quietly become one of the most useful tools in a social media manager's toolkit — and when it comes to profile pictures and cover photos, there are some genuinely great use cases.
Background removal and replacement. Tools like Adobe Firefly, Canva's AI background remover, and Remove.bg can cleanly strip the background from a profile photo in seconds. This used to require a designer or at least a decent knowledge of Photoshop. Now you can do it in a few clicks and drop in a clean white or branded background that'll look polished at any size.
Upscaling low-resolution images. If your best available photo is lower resolution than you'd like, AI upscaling tools like Topaz Gigapixel or Adobe's Super Resolution can intelligently fill in detail and increase the image size without the blurriness you'd get from a simple resize. This is particularly useful if you only have an older headshot and can't reshoot.
Generating cover photo visuals. AI image generators like Midjourney, DALL·E, and Adobe Firefly are genuinely good at producing abstract, branded backgrounds for LinkedIn banners and Facebook covers. You're not going to use them for your profile picture (more on that below), but for a visual backdrop with shapes, textures, or brand colours, they can save hours of design work.
Resizing and reformatting across platforms. Tools like Canva's Magic Resize and Adobe Express can take a single image and automatically reformat it for every platform's specifications. It's not always perfect — you'll still want to check the result — but it dramatically speeds up the process of preparing assets for multiple channels at once.
Writing your bio and captions. Not strictly image-related, but worth mentioning: AI tools are excellent at helping you write or tighten up the text that accompanies your profile. Your bio, your LinkedIn headline, your Instagram caption — all of these contribute to the overall impression your profile makes.
The bottom line on AI for images: it's a fantastic accelerator for production tasks. Background removal, upscaling, resizing, generating backgrounds — these are all areas where AI genuinely saves time and delivers good results.
It's not all good news though. There are a few places where leaning on AI too heavily can backfire — sometimes in ways that are hard to spot until someone else points them out.
AI-generated profile pictures. This is the big one. There's been an enormous increase in AI-generated headshots and profile photos over the past couple of years, and while the technology has improved dramatically, people are getting better at spotting them too. On LinkedIn especially — where trust and authenticity are currency — an AI-generated photo can undermine the credibility you're trying to build. The uncanny-valley effect (slightly too-perfect skin, strange lighting, odd background details) still shows up regularly, and it reads as inauthentic to many viewers. If you need a better headshot, it's worth investing in a real one.
Generic AI-designed cover photos. AI image generators default toward a certain aesthetic — dreamy gradients, vague abstract shapes, overly polished compositions that look like stock art. When everyone uses the same tools with similar prompts, profile banners start looking identical. If your LinkedIn cover looks like it came from the same prompt as fifty other people in your industry, it doesn't differentiate you at all. Use AI as a starting point, not a final product.
Compression artefacts from AI-processed images. Some AI editing tools, particularly mobile apps, over-process images in ways that introduce compression artefacts or unusual sharpening. When you then upload that image to a social platform, which applies its own compression on top, you can end up with a noticeably degraded result. Always export at the highest quality setting available and check the final result after uploading — which is exactly what SocialPreviewing is designed to help with.
Auto-cropping that misses the point. Some AI-powered tools will automatically crop your image to the right dimensions for a given platform. The problem is that automatic cropping doesn't understand context — it might centre on the geometric centre of the image rather than the actual subject, or make choices that cut off something important. Always review any auto-crop before uploading, and use a preview tool to see the result in the actual platform UI.
Over-relying on AI for consistency decisions. Consistency across platforms is one of the most important things for brand recognition — using the same profile picture everywhere so people can identify you whether they're on LinkedIn or Instagram. AI tools that automatically generate or resize images for different platforms can sometimes introduce subtle variations in colour, cropping, or tone that make your presence feel slightly inconsistent. It's worth doing a manual check across all your platforms periodically to make sure everything still looks cohesive.
The honest take: AI is a powerful assistant for image work, but it needs a human in the loop. Use it to speed up the production and editing process, but always apply your own judgement before publishing — and always preview the final result.
Social media image sizes aren't glamorous knowledge, but they're genuinely useful — and getting them wrong costs you in first impressions. Here's the short version:
For deeper dives on specific platforms, head to our individual guides:
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Getting your profile picture or cover photo to look right across every platform shouldn't feel like solving a puzzle. But between different dimensions, circular crops, mobile vs. desktop display sizes, and platform compression — it often does. This guide covers everything you need to know, all in one place.
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