Facebook Reels size and length: every video is a reel now

Export a Facebook reel at 1080 × 1920. Meta's pages say every video posted to Facebook is now a reel, of any length and any aspect ratio; an app posting through Meta's Reels API is still held to 90 seconds. Below, each rule as Meta's own pages give it (and, for one upload route, a posting service's docs), linked to the page it comes from.

Every video on Facebook is a reel now

That is what Meta's pages say now. Facebook's Help Center, in an update dated September 2025: “All videos posted to Facebook will be shared as reels, regardless of length or orientation.” It names two exceptions: “All videos you post on Facebook (except Stories and Live) are now Reels and follow your selected privacy settings.” Meta's Business Help Center says it in the present tense: “All videos posted to Facebook are now shared as reels to simplify the way creators produce and share video content on the platform.”

Meta announced the change in June 2025, on Meta for Creators: “Facebook Reels won’t have any length or format restrictions after this change, and all types of video content continues to be welcome.” And: “You’ll be able to create and share reels of any length or orientation, whether it’s a quick, 30-second vertical clip or an in-depth, 20-minute plus horizontal episode.”

One older Help Center article, with no 2025 update on it, still describes a choice for Pages: “When you publish a video that is up to 90 seconds long on your Page, it can be published as a reel or as a post.” The newer pages above say every video is a reel.

How long a Facebook reel can be

As long as you like, in Facebook itself. Meta's Business Help Center: “There is no minimum or maximum length requirement. Your reel can be any length of time you want.” What Meta gives instead of a limit is advice, from the 2025 announcement: “Shorter reels (10 to 30 seconds) drive reach and lightweight ways to engage with and grow your audience, while longer reels (30 seconds to 3 minutes; 3+ minutes) drive engagement and help build community with your audience.” So 10 to 30 seconds is the length Meta ties to reach.

Apps are another matter. Meta's Reels Publishing API, which scheduling apps can post reels through, still lists the length as “3 to 90 seconds.” It adds: “A reel published as a story on a Facebook Page can not exceed 60 seconds.”

Facebook, the Reels API and the Page video upload

This guide compares three routes a reel can take to Facebook, each with its own rules: posted in Facebook by hand, sent by an app through the Reels API, or sent by an app through the ordinary Page video upload.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

A dash means the pages this guide cites give no figure for that rule. The first column is from Meta's Help Center and Business Help Center, and the Reels API column is from its developer docs. For the Page video upload, Meta's Video API reference names two aspect ratios, “Aspect Ratio: 9x16, 16x9”, and gives no length. The rest of that column, marked (posting service), is from the documentation of the posting service Postango uses, which holds the sign-in for each account you link and sends each post to the network, and which posts through this upload. It lists this upload's limits as “240 minutes maximum” and “4 GB maximum”, and says its own way of handing Facebook the file “works for hosted MP4s up to a few hundred MB”.

Size and aspect ratio

Make it 9:16, 1080 × 1920. Meta's reels requirements: “Recommended resolution: 1080p”. The Reels API's specifications: “1080 x 1920 pixels (recommended). Minimum is 540 x 960 pixels”.

Facebook itself takes any aspect ratio, square and horizontal included, but Meta's best practices for reels advise against wide ones: “Use vertical video and avoid horizontal videos that are typically not as easy to recreate.” Among the reels the same page says to avoid posting is one “Uploaded with a border around it.” Through the Reels API, its list of errors sets the range: “Aspect ratios for videos need to be between 16x9 and 9x16.”

For an edited video, Facebook's export settings add a width rule: “An aspect ratio no larger than 4000px wide and divisible by 16px.” 1080 isn't a multiple of 16, so a 1080 × 1920 export can't meet that part. Meta's reels requirements and Reels API docs both recommend 1080 wide all the same.

The cover

You can pick one when you upload. Facebook's steps for a reel on a computer include this one: “(Optional) Trim your video, add a description, hashtags, or select a cover image.” For a video on a Page, the Video Options offer Choose Suggested, Upload Image or Choose From Video.

Meta's developer docs give a custom cover a file size and a aspect ratio, but no pixel size: “Maximum thumbnail file size 10MB.” and “We recommend that you use thumbnails with the same aspect ratio as the video.” Skip the cover and Facebook picks a frame; in the posting service's words, “By default Facebook auto-picks a frame from the video as its cover.”

File and format

Meta's reels requirements, the lines that matter for an export:

• “Recommended format: .mp4”
• “Recommended video codec: H.264, H.265”
• “Recommended frame rate: 24FPS - 60FPS”
• “Codec: AAC Low Complexity” (for the sound)
• “Sample rate: 44.1kHz or 48kHz”

Facebook's older export settings, for a video coming out of editing software, ask for the same codecs and add a ceiling on the frame rate: “A frame rate at, or below, 30fps.” So an MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio at 30 frames a second fits both pages. The same settings ask that “Videos should not contain edit lists or special boxes in file containers.”

Facebook's list of video formats names 30 formats, and starts: “We recommend using the MP4 or MOV format”. Meta's help and developer pages give no largest file size for a reel.

Descriptions and hashtags

From Facebook's steps for a reel: “Hashtags help other people find your reel when searching. Descriptions are optional.” Its hashtag page sets two rules: “A hashtag must be written as a single word, without any spaces.” and “You can include numbers in a hashtag, but punctuation and special characters (like $ and %) won't work.”

Neither page gives a limit on how long a description can be or how many hashtags it can carry. Instagram caps hashtags at five (Instagram's limit, explained).

Posting reels from a scheduling app

An app can post a reel two ways, and only one is held to 90 seconds. Through the Reels Publishing API, the table's middle column applies, with a cap on volume: “Reels API is limited to 30 API-published posts within a 24-hour moving period.” Through the ordinary Page video upload, Meta's docs give no length limit. Either way, it posts to a Page, not a personal profile: “You can only publish Reels to Facebook Pages”, say Meta's docs, and the posting service's: “Posting to personal Facebook profiles via the Graph API was deprecated by Meta years ago and is unavailable to most apps.”

Check your own file

The free video checker reads a video's length, aspect ratio and file size in your browser, without uploading it. For a 2-minute video at 1080 × 1920 it answers “Fits” for Facebook.

The same guide for the other networks: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts and LinkedIn. Every network's limits, side by side, are on the video limits page.

What Postango does with Facebook

Postango, which publishes this guide, posts to Facebook through the ordinary Page video upload. What that means for a video:

• To a Page. Postango posts to a Facebook Page you connect, not to a personal profile: Meta stopped letting most apps post to those years ago.
• Not held to 90 seconds. Postango doesn't post through the Reels API, so that 90 seconds limit doesn't apply. It books Facebook by the 240 minutes the posting service gives for the Page video upload, and the longest video Postango can make is shorter than that, so it never splits one for Facebook. Facebook says it shares every video posted to it as a reel.
• The same file as everywhere else. Postango doesn't make a separate video for each network. Each video comes back as a short-form edit, vertical by default, and a long-form edit, and each one you keep is a single file, posted the same everywhere it goes. A vertical video is 720 × 1280 on Starter, and 1080 × 1920 on Pro and Workshop. Workshop makes wide videos up to 4K; a vertical video is 1080 × 1920 at most on every plan. It doesn't check the file size: the posting service gives 4 GB, and says its way of handing Facebook the file “works for hosted MP4s up to a few hundred MB”. If a network refuses a post, it shows as failed on your calendar with the reason. Posting never uses a video: each video is counted once, when it is made.
• Your caption, as the description. A caption Postango writes carries at most five hashtags: your own first, from the “Hashtags on every post” field in Settings › Presets, then the ones written for the video. Postango's caption writer is told never to use #fyp, #viral or #trending. A caption you write yourself posts as you wrote it, hashtags and all: none are cut for Facebook. Any caption is cut at a word boundary only past 63,206 characters, the limit the posting service gives.
• No cover. Postango sends Facebook no cover, so Facebook picks a frame, which you can change on the Page. It sends a cover only to Pinterest, which won't take a video without one.
• Nothing posts until you approve it. Each video waits for your OK, then goes out at the time you set.

Questions

Sources

Meta's pages, and the posting service's, read on October 6, 2026.

• Facebook Help Center: create a reel on Facebook
• Meta Business Help Center: about Facebook Reels
• Meta for Creators: making it easier to create videos on Facebook (Jun 17, 2025)
• Facebook Help Center: publish short videos on a Page as a reel or a post
• Meta developer docs: Reels Publishing API
• Meta developer docs: Video API reference
• Meta Business Help Center: requirements for Facebook Reels
• Meta Business Help Center: tips and best practices for Facebook Reels
• Facebook Help Center: settings recommended for an edited video
• Facebook Help Center: post or edit a video on your Page
• Meta developer docs: video thumbnails
• Facebook Help Center: video file formats you can upload
• Facebook Help Center: how to use hashtags