What size is an Instagram Story?

The size, from Meta’s own pages

Instagram’s Help Center explains how to share a photo or video to your story but names no size for one. The figures Meta does publish are for Stories ads and for the API that scheduling tools use. Read on 10 October 2026:

Both pages put 9:16 first. Make the file 1080 × 1920 and nothing has to be cropped or padded.

How long a Story can run

• One clip: a video up to 60 seconds long appears as one clip. A longer one is broken into several clips, which the video trimmer can edit; on that page Instagram says the trimmer is currently only available on iOS (Instagram Help).
• 24 hours: Stories disappear from your profile, Feed and Direct inbox after 24 hours unless you add them to highlights.
• Through the API: a Story video is 3 to 60 seconds, and Instagram’s reference says a Story expires after 24 hours too.

The safe zone

Instagram’s Help Center gives no safe zone for a Story you post yourself. Meta does give one for ads, on its page of creative best practices for Stories: keep text, logos and other important elements out of the top 14% and the bottom 20% of the creative, so the call-to-action sticker doesn’t cover them. On a 1080 × 1920 frame that is about 269 pixels at the top and 384 at the bottom. That is our arithmetic on Meta’s percentages.

Meta’s page on the safe zone for ads adds that on screens taller than 9:16 it may zoom the creative to fill the screen, which crops the edges, or show it at 9:16 on black. It gives no figures there; Ads Manager draws the zone over your creative. For Reels the zone is different, and the free Reels and Shorts safe zone checker draws the figures Meta publishes.

Changing the font size

From Instagram’s tips for stories: tap Add text and, in the Classic text style, adjust the size up or down with the slider. In any text you add, two fingers pinch and zoom to rotate and resize it. Text can also be aligned, coloured, given a background and pinned to a fixed spot in a video.

Posting Stories with Mellow Hub

Hub publishes a Story to a professional Instagram account when the placement is Stories and the post holds exactly one photo or video; it refuses a Story with more or fewer items than that. Hub counts the items and does not measure the file, so make it 1080 × 1920 first. The free image resizer crops a picture to that size.

Meta’s API reference says publishing stickers (link, poll, location) is not supported, while mentioning someone without a sticker is. A Story that depends on a poll or a link sticker is made in the Instagram app. To schedule one, see how to schedule an Instagram Story.

The note below on what Hub has published is kept per network, not per format, so it doesn’t single out Stories.

Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo). One publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five. There are no automatic overage charges.