LinkedIn video size and length: 15 minutes by hand, 30 minutes from a scheduling app

A vertical 1080 × 1920 video is inside every size and aspect ratio rule LinkedIn publishes, for posts and for ads. How long it can be depends on who posts it: 15 minutes if you upload it yourself, 30 minutes if an app sends it through LinkedIn's API. Below, each rule as LinkedIn's own pages give it (its Help Center, its API docs and its ad specs), linked to the page it comes from.

How long a LinkedIn video can be

Up to 15 minutes if you upload it yourself. LinkedIn's Help Center: “Maximum video duration: 15 minutes”. And at the short end: “Minimum video duration: 3 seconds when uploading from desktop and 2 seconds when uploading from the LinkedIn mobile app.”

An app can post a longer one. LinkedIn's Videos API, which scheduling apps post video through, gives: “Length: Three seconds to 30 minutes.” By LinkedIn's own pages, then, a video between 15 minutes and 30 minutes is too long to upload yourself but within what the API takes.

For ads, LinkedIn's ad specs give the API's range and add advice: “We recommend uploading videos that are 15-30 seconds long, so they can qualify for all possible placements across the LinkedIn Feed and the Audience Network.”

Posting it yourself, through the API, and as an ad

LinkedIn's video rules sit on three sets of pages, and each set has its own figures: the Help Center's, for a video you post yourself; the Videos API's, for a video an app posts; and the ad specs, for a video you pay to show.

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 LinkedIn's Help Center, the second from its Videos API docs and the third from its ad specs. The API docs give three lines of specifications, and point to the ad specs for the rest:

• “Length: Three seconds to 30 minutes.”
• “File size: Between 75kb and 500MB.”
• “File format: MP4.”
• “Refer to Video Ads Advertising Specifications for more information.”

The ad specs reach past ads, too: “Review the specifications below to make sure your video ad meets these guidelines, including when sponsoring an existing organic video post as an ad.” So a post you might pay to boost later should meet them as well.

Size and aspect ratio

For a video you post yourself, LinkedIn's Help Center gives ranges, not a size: “Resolution range: 256x144 to 4096x2304” and “Aspect ratio: 1:2.4 - 2.4:1”. That takes anything from a tall 1:2.4 to a wide 2.4:1, square, 9:16 and 16:9 included. The Videos API docs give no aspect ratio or size at all, and point to the ad specs for more.

The ad specs name four aspect ratios, 16:9, 1:1, 4:5 and 9:16, each with its own range of sizes, and mark the vertical 4:5 as the recommended ratio, at 720 × 900. The widest they take is 16:9: “our maximum allowed ratio, which is 16:9 or 1.777”. For 9:16 they recommend 720 × 1280 and take 360 × 640 to 1080 × 1920, so a vertical 1080 × 1920 video is the largest they list, and inside the Help Center's ranges too.

LinkedIn also has a full-screen vertical video feed, and you can't post to it directly. Its Help Center: “Currently, you cannot directly add or post videos to the full-screen vertical video feed or the video tab on your LinkedIn mobile app.” And: “Any video you post to LinkedIn may be eligible to appear in the video feed, tab, or carousel based on relevance and performance.” It adds: “Full-screen video, the video tab, and the video carousel may not be available to all members at this time.”

Safe zones

LinkedIn's advice: “Keep the edges (top, bottom, and sides) of your video free of key elements, text, and logos to ensure they are within the safe zone and aren’t overlapped by the LinkedIn user interface.” It gives no measurements. Postango puts the bottom of the words it adds onto the video picture (subtitles that are part of the video itself, not the post's text) 307 pixels up from the bottom of a 1,920-pixel-tall video, about 16% of the height.

The thumbnail

On a computer you can pick your own: once the video is in, LinkedIn's steps let you “Upload video thumbnail”. Through the API a thumbnail is optional: “If the partner doesn't upload a thumbnail, a system generated thumbnail may be added to the video.” For an ad, the specs set the file: “File format: JPG or PNG”, “Maximum file size: 2 MB”, and “The aspect ratio and resolution of the video thumbnail and video should match.”

Captions

LinkedIn can caption a video for you. Its steps for sharing one: “Auto-captions are currently supported in 10 languages.” You can add a caption file of your own instead. For an ad, the specs' rule for that file: “Must be in SRT format.”

File and format

LinkedIn's Help Center, the lines that matter for an export:

• “Maximum file size: 5 GB”
• “Minimum file size: 75 KB”
• “Frame rates: 10fps - 60 fps”
• “Bit rates: 192 Kbps - 30 Mbps”

Its troubleshooting page's table of file types and codecs ticks MP4, MOV, AVI, WEBM, MKV, WMV, VC1, MPEG, MPEG2, MPEG1VIDEO, DVVIDEO, QTRLE and TSCC2 for desktop, iOS and Android alike, and warns: “For example, if your file type is ProRes, you may be able to upload it, but it will not be able to process.”

The largest file depends on the route. The Help Center says 5 GB. The Videos API page gives two figures: “File size: Between 75kb and 500MB.” in its specifications, and “Maximum allowed Videos size is 5GB.” in its upload reference. The ad specs say “Between 75 KB and 500 MB”. So a file between 75 KB and 500 MB fits every figure; between 500 MB and 5 GB, it depends on which page you go by.

The only file type named everywhere is MP4. The ad specs add a video codec and an audio format: “H.264 or VP8” and “AAC or MPEG4”. The frame rate is where posts and ads part: 10 to 60 fps for a post, “Less than 30 FPS (frames per second)” for an ad.

The text with a video

From LinkedIn's Help Center: “The character limit for a post is 3000 characters.” A post carries one video, and its video FAQ says so: “You can only add one video to a single post.” None of the pages cited here gives a limit on hashtags.

Posting LinkedIn video from a scheduling app

Through LinkedIn's Videos API, an app uploads a video either as you or as a company page, and the API checks who is asking: “For videos with member URN owners, the caller needs to match the video owner.” And: “For videos with company URN owners, the caller needs to have ADMIN or DSC permissions for the company page.” In plain terms, an app can post video to your profile only as you, and to a company page only for one of its admins or for someone given its Sponsored Content poster role (DSC in the docs), which lets a person post ads for the page.

The API docs give such an app up to 30 minutes, and a file of 500 MB in one place and 5 GB in another, and point to the ad specs for the rest. 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, which uses this API, says: “Publish text posts, images, videos, and articles to LinkedIn personal profiles and company pages.” And: “Videos: MP4 (1 per post, up to 5 GB)”.

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 LinkedIn it checks the length against the API's 30 minutes (longer than the 15 minutes you can upload yourself), and the file size against both of the Videos API page's figures: under 500 MB fits, over 5 GB won't post, and between the two it says it can't tell. For a 2-minute video at 1080 × 1920 and 150 MB it answers “Fits” for LinkedIn.

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

What Postango does with LinkedIn

Postango, which publishes this guide, posts to LinkedIn through LinkedIn's API. What that means for a video:

• To your profile. Postango posts to the LinkedIn profile you connect. Company pages aren't supported yet.
• Up to 30 minutes. The API's length applies, not the 15 minutes for uploading yourself.
• 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 against LinkedIn's. 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 post's text. Postango's caption writer is told to keep hashtags out of the text itself and never to use #fyp, #viral or #trending. Its hashtags go on a separate last line: your own first, from the “Hashtags on every post” field in Settings › Presets, then the ones written for the video. On LinkedIn that line keeps at most three, and when it has more, the tags written for the video keep their places first, so your own are the first to go. A caption you write yourself posts as you wrote it, with one change: if its last line is only hashtags, that line is cut to three, any written for the video kept first, then yours in the order you wrote them. Past 3,000 characters, LinkedIn's limit, a caption is cut at a word boundary.
• Public, with no thumbnail. Postango posts for everyone to see, not just your connections. It sends LinkedIn no thumbnail, so LinkedIn may make one; 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

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

• LinkedIn Help: share videos on LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Videos API (Microsoft Learn)
• LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help: video ads advertising specifications
• LinkedIn Help: video sharing troubleshooting
• LinkedIn Help: full-screen vertical video on LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Help: differences between posting updates and publishing articles
• LinkedIn Help: share a video on LinkedIn FAQ