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YouTube Thumbnail Size and Other Social Dimensions

Fit images to the recommended dimensions for YouTube thumbnails, Instagram posts, and OG images in one step. Choose between filling the frame and keeping the whole image, and everything is processed inside your browser.

Choose JPG or PNG files

Drag and drop multiple files at once

Try with an example

Recommended image sizes by platform

These are the sizes each platform publishes. Uploading larger doesn't improve quality, because the platform downscales it again and the page just loads slower. Uploading smaller gets it stretched and blurred.

UseRecommended sizeRatio
YouTube thumbnail1280×720px16:9
Instagram square1080×1080px1:1
Instagram portrait1080×1350px4:5
Instagram story1080×1920px9:16
OG image1200×630px40:21
Blog hero1200×675px16:9
An OG image at 1200x630 is 40:21, not 16:9. Build it at 16:9 and link previews on Facebook and messaging apps will crop the top and bottom.

What it does

A portrait photo cropped to the YouTube thumbnail size, 1280×720.

Before
Portrait landscape photo of mountain ridges and sky
After
The middle of the same photo cropped to 16:9 as a 1280×720 YouTube thumbnail

How to use

  1. Drop your images here or click to choose them. You can select several at once.
  2. Pick a platform preset and a fitting mode: fill and crop, or fit whole image.
  3. Press fit to size to generate the results. Multiple files come back as a ZIP.

FAQ

Is uploading larger than the recommended size a problem?
It does not improve quality and it does slow loading. Platforms re-scale and re-compress whatever you upload to their own spec, so a 4000-pixel original is still shown as a downscaled copy. Uploading smaller than the spec is the real mistake, since the image gets upscaled and looks soft.
Should I fill and crop, or fit the whole image?
For thumbnails, where the composition carries the message, fill and crop covers the frame completely; keep the important elements near the center. For product shots that must not be cut, fit whole image adds white padding but trims nothing.
What is the YouTube thumbnail size limit?
YouTube accepts thumbnails up to 2MB. At 1280x720 saved as JPG you will typically land near 300KB, so the limit is rarely an issue. If you do need to go smaller, pair this with the image compression tool.
Text on my thumbnail looks blurry.
JPG's lossy compression produces artifacts wherever colors change abruptly, which is exactly what letters do. Switching the output format to PNG keeps those edges crisp. Since platforms often re-encode to JPG anyway, the durable fix is to avoid very thin or very small lettering.

Related guides

Related tools

  • Resize image

    Resize JPG or PNG width and height in pixels.

  • Crop Image

    Drag to keep just the part you need. No loss of quality.

  • Compress image

    Compress images to your target file size (KB or MB).