Instagram video size and Reel length: in the app and from a scheduling app

Last updated October 17, 2026

Export an Instagram reel at 1080 × 1920. It can run 20 minutes if you post it in the app and 15 minutes if a scheduling app posts it for you, but Instagram recommends reels to people who don't follow you only up to 3 minutes. The app and the API follow separate rulebooks, and this page sets them side by side, each figure linked to Instagram's or Meta's own page.

The short answer

The size to export: 1080 × 1920 pixels, 9:16. It is the aspect ratio Meta recommends, and through its API a video can be at most 1,920 pixels wide.
The longest reel: 20 minutes in the app, by Instagram's Help Center, and 15 minutes when a scheduling app posts it. Reels over 3 minutes aren't recommended to people who don't follow you.
The biggest file: 300 MB through the API. Instagram's Help Center gives no limit for the app.
The format: an MP4 file with H.264 video and AAC audio, at 23 to 60 frames a second.
The caption: 2,200 characters, with at most five hashtags (our guide to the hashtag limit).

The app and the API: two rulebooks

Posting by hand in the app and posting through a scheduling app follow different rules. Meta publishes the API's in its developer docs; the app's are in Instagram's Help Center.

Instagram video rules in the app and through the API
Rule	In the Instagram app	Through the API (scheduling apps)
Longest reel	20 minutes	15 minutes
Shortest	—	3 seconds
Aspect ratio	1.91:1 to 9:16	0.01:1 to 10:1; 9:16 recommended
Resolution	At least 720 pixels	Up to 1,920 pixels wide
File size	—	300 MB
Format	Video saved with the High profile (an export setting), progressive (not interlaced); stereo or 5.1 sound at 48 or 96 kHz	MP4 or MOV; H.264 or HEVC video; AAC audio
Frame rate	At least 30 frames a second	23 to 60 frames a second
Caption	—	2,200 characters, 20 @mentions
Hashtags	5 per post or reel, since December 2025	Meta's docs still say 30 (why)
Cover	420 × 654 pixels recommended; can't be changed after posting	An image or a frame the tool names; otherwise the first frame

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

A dash means Instagram's Help Center pages on reels give no figure for that rule. Two more rules come from Meta's publishing guide. It covers posting “on Instagram professional accounts using the Instagram Platform”, so a scheduling app, Postango included, can post only to an Instagram professional account, not a personal one. And: “Instagram accounts are limited to 100 API-published posts within a 24-hour moving period.”

TikTok splits the same way; our TikTok video size guide sets out its two rulebooks, and every network's limits are side by side on the video limits page.

How long a reel can be

Instagram has changed this often, and its own pages haven't all caught up:

July 2022. Meta said video posts would become reels: “In the coming weeks, new video posts shorter than 15 minutes will be shared as reels.” (Meta)
January 2025. Reels went from 90 seconds to 3 minutes. Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, said Instagram had “heard the feedback that this is just too short for those who want to share longer stories” (Engadget).
November 2025. The Reels camera began recording up to 20 minutes. (Social Media Today)
As of October 4, 2026. Instagram's Help Center says “You can record and edit videos up to 20 minutes with Instagram Reels.”

What Instagram's pages agree on is the length that matters for reach:

“Note: Reels over 3 minutes won't be recommended to new audiences.” (Instagram: Reels feature page and FAQ)
“We recommend videos to unconnected audiences that are 3 minutes or less.” (Instagram for Creators: frequently asked questions)

Through the API, a reel can run from 3 seconds to 15 minutes (Meta). So: keep a reel to 3 minutes or less if you want Instagram to be able to recommend it to people who don't follow you, up to 15 minutes if a scheduling app posts it, and up to 20 minutes in the app, by Instagram's latest figure.

Feed, Reels and Stories

A single video posted to Instagram is a reel now. In the app, Meta announced the change in July 2022 (the first step above). Through the API, Meta's publishing guide says “To publish a reel, create a container for the video and include the media_type=REELS parameter along with the path to the video using the video_url parameter.”

Whether a reel also shows in the main feed is a setting the posting tool sends, which Meta's docs call share_to_feed: “When true, indicates that the reel can appear in both the Feed and Reels tabs. When false, indicates the reel can only appear in the Reels tab.” They add: “Neither value determines whether the reel actually appears in the Reels tab because the reel may not meet eligibilty requirements or may not be selected by our algorithm.”

Stories are separate. Through the API, a story video runs from 3 to 60 seconds and can be 100 MB at most (Meta).

Aspect ratio and pixels

Make it 9:16, 1080 × 1920. Meta's API docs: “Required aspect ratio is between 0.01:1 and 10:1 but we recommend 9:16 to avoid cropping or blank space.” They also cap a reel at 1,920 pixels wide (Meta). In the app, Instagram's Help Center takes anything from 1.91:1 to 9:16, and says: “Reels should have a minimum frame rate of 30 FPS (frames per second) and minimum resolution of 720 pixels.” 1080 × 1920 is 9:16 at full HD, and fits both rulebooks.

A 4K phone video is wider than 1,920 pixels whichever way up it is, so the API won't take it as it is: export it at 1080 × 1920 first. The free video checker flags a file that is too wide.

Square, 4:5 and wide videos

The API takes all three, since each is inside 0.01:1 to 10:1. The only word in Meta's API docs on how they look is the advice above: 9:16 “to avoid cropping or blank space”. Don't add bars to make a wide video fill a tall frame: Instagram says it aims to make some reels less visible, among them “low-resolution or watermarked reels, reels that are muted or contain borders, reels that are majority text, or reels that have already been posted on Instagram” (Instagram). Film upright, or crop the wide video to 9:16 around what matters.

The same list names low resolution and watermarks, and Instagram's creator FAQ says it plainly: “Video quality matters.” “People tend to engage more with high visual quality content.” And: “Ditch the watermark! The 3rd party watermark on your reel may be impacting its reach.” Upload the original export, not a copy saved out of another app.

The profile grid

In January 2025 Instagram swapped the square profile grid for taller rectangles. Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram: “at this point most of what's uploaded — both photos and videos — are vertical in their orientation, so portrait versus landscape or square, and it just is a bummer to overly crop them” (Engadget).

The cover

Through the API, the tool posting a reel can send a separate cover image or name a frame. Meta's docs on the image: “For Reels only. The path to an image to use as the cover image for the Reels tab.” On the frame, when the tool names none: “The default value is 0, which is the first frame of the video or reel.” So with neither, the first frame is the cover.

In the app you pick a frame from the clip or upload an image (PNG or JPG). Instagram's Help Center: “The recommended size for cover photos is 420px by 654px (or 1:1.55 ratio). Right now, you can't edit your cover photo after you've uploaded it.” If nothing sets a cover, make the first frame worth stopping on.

Text safe zones

Instagram's Help Center pages on reels give no safe zone for text. What we can offer is our own practice: Postango puts the bottom of the words it adds onto the video picture (not the caption under the post) 307 pixels up from the bottom of a 1,920-pixel-tall video, about 16% of the height. On the posts of the shops Postango's founder runs, words there have stayed clear of the buttons and text the apps lay over a video.

File size and format

Meta's Reel specifications for the API, word for word:

Container: “MOV or MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), no edit lists, moov atom at the front of the file.”
Video codec: “HEVC or H264, progressive scan, closed GOP, 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.”
Audio codec: “AAC, 48khz sample rate maximum, 1 or 2 channels (mono or stereo).”
Frame rate: “23-60 FPS.”
Video bitrate: “VBR, 25Mbps maximum”; audio bitrate: “128kbps”
File size: 300 MB at most.

In plain terms: an MP4 file with H.264 video and AAC audio meets the container and codec lines; the frame rate, bitrate, width and file size still have to fit (Meta).

For most exports, the file size, not the length, is the limit a longer reel meets first. Size is bitrate times length, so at the 25 Mbps Meta allows, a file passes 300 MB after about 96 seconds. A 3-minute reel has to average about 13 Mbps or less, sound included, and a 15-minute one about 2.7.

We ran into this on our own videos. Until August 2026, Postango kept a wide video at the resolution the phone filmed and put no cap on bitrate: a 69-second video of walnut being milled came out at 190 MB, and 2 minutes 53 seconds of a batch of hardwood urns being made at about 700 MB, more than twice the API's 300 MB. Postango now caps both resolution and bitrate by plan. 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. Those caps don't keep every long video under 300 MB, and Postango doesn't check the file size before it posts: a file Instagram refuses shows as a failed post on your calendar, with the reason.

Instagram's Help Center gives no file-size limit for the app. A story through the API can be 100 MB.

Captions and hashtags

Through the API, a caption can be 2,200 characters with up to 20 @mentions (Meta). Hashtags: five per post or reel since December 2025. What counts toward the five, and what Instagram hasn't said, is in our guide to Instagram's hashtag limit.

Check your own file

Check your own file in your browser; nothing is uploaded. The free video checker reads a video's length, aspect ratio and file size and holds them to these limits: the limits for a video posted from a scheduling app, the right-hand column above. Here is what it says about one example, worked out by the same code when this page was built: a video 4 minutes long, 1080 × 1920, 600 MB.

Instagram: Won't post as is. 600 MB — Instagram takes up to 300 MB. At 4 minutes it is also past the 3 minutes Instagram recommends to new audiences.
TikTok: Can't tell. 4:00 long — every TikTok account can post up to 3:00; only some can post 5:00 or 10:00; Postango would send it whole, and an account allowed less refuses it (why).

Through the API, the file has to get smaller: to come in under 300 MB at 4 minutes, a video has to average about 10 Mbps, sound included.

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

What Postango does with Instagram

Postango, which publishes this guide, posts to Instagram through Meta's API. Here is what its code does with a video there:

The same file as everywhere else. Postango makes no Instagram version. It posts the one video it made (how that works). 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 against Instagram's 300 MB; a file Instagram refuses shows as a failed post on your calendar.
As a reel. Every video Postango sends to Instagram goes up as a reel. It posts through the posting service Postango uses, which holds the sign-in for each account you link and sends each post to the network, and that service sends each reel to show in the feed as well; Postango doesn't change that. It doesn't post stories.
Length. Posted whole up to 15 min. A longer video is split into parts there, labelled “Part 1 of 2” and so on, unless you choose on the review card to cut it to 15 min or leave Instagram out. A video shorter than 3 s isn't posted there. Posting it in parts doesn't use more videos. Each part takes one of your posting days, so the next video goes out on the next free day.
No split at 3 minutes. A 4-minute video goes to Instagram whole, past the length Instagram recommends to new audiences. Postango's editor sets the length from your footage.
Caption and hashtags. One caption per video. The words are the same on every network; the hashtags are cut to each network's count, and YouTube and Pinterest also get a title. On Instagram the caption carries at most five hashtags, your own first, and Postango's caption writer is told never to use #fyp, #viral or #trending. Any caption over 2,200 characters, yours included, is cut at a word boundary, never through a hashtag. A caption you write yourself otherwise posts as you wrote it, with one change: if its last line is only hashtags, that line is cut to five, the tags written for the video kept first. Hashtags inside your sentences are never cut, so keep the whole caption to five yourself.
No cover. Postango sends Instagram no cover, so Instagram uses the first frame. It sends a cover only to Pinterest, which won't take a video without one.

Questions

What size should an Instagram Reel be?+

1080 × 1920 pixels, 9:16. Meta recommends 9:16 for reels posted through its API “to avoid cropping or blank space”, and caps them at 1,920 pixels wide. In the app, Instagram's Help Center takes 1.91:1 to 9:16, at a minimum resolution of 720 pixels. 1080 × 1920 is 9:16 at full HD.

How long can an Instagram Reel be?+

In the app, 20 minutes: Instagram's Help Center says “You can record and edit videos up to 20 minutes with Instagram Reels.” Through the API, which scheduling apps use, 3 seconds to 15 minutes. Either way, Instagram says reels over 3 minutes won't be recommended to people who don't follow you.

What is the maximum file size for an Instagram video?+

300 MB for a reel posted through the API, and 100 MB for a story. Instagram's Help Center gives no file-size limit for the app.

Can I post 4K video to Instagram?+

Not through the API: Meta caps a reel at 1,920 pixels wide, and a 4K video is wider than that whichever way up it is. Export it at 1080 × 1920 first. In the app, the Help Center gives a minimum resolution, 720 pixels, and no maximum.

Are Instagram video posts reels now?+

Yes, for a single video. Meta said in July 2022: “In the coming weeks, new video posts shorter than 15 minutes will be shared as reels.” Its API publishes a single video as a reel too, and a setting decides whether the reel can also show in the main feed.

How many hashtags can an Instagram Reel have?+

Five, since December 2025. What counts toward them, and what Instagram hasn't said, is in our guide to Instagram's hashtag limit.

Sources

Instagram's Help Center read on October 4, 2026; everything else on October 3, 2026.

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