Instagram Story Resizer

The frame is 1080 by 1920, and the safe zone inside it changed

A story or reel is 1,080 by 1,920 pixels at 9:16, and that has not changed. What changed is the guidance about where content can safely sit inside it. Meta consolidated Stories and Reels across Instagram and Facebook into a single unified 9:16 safe zone and stopped publishing fixed pixel counts, publishing percentages instead. Guides quoting 250 pixel margins, or the old Reels figures, are describing the pre March 2026 specification. The frame is the same; the box your content must stay inside is now larger than most guides still say.

FrameExtractor: Instagram Story and Reels safe zones

Reels leaves you barely half the frame

The two formats share a frame and a top margin but not a bottom margin, and the difference is large. A reel reserves about 35 percent at the bottom for a caption that can run several lines, the audio credit, the follow button, and the engagement rail, which leaves a usable area of about 950 by 979, just over half the frame height. A story reserves about 20 percent and leaves 950 by 1,267. Meta publishes one unified figure built around the tighter reel case, so a design made to the reel safe area is safe everywhere, at the cost of some empty space in a story.

NoteA reel leaves only about 51 percent of the frame height usable. Design for that case.

What actually gets clipped, and it is usually captions

Burned in subtitles are the classic failure. Caption text placed 100 to 200 pixels from the bottom looks correct in an editing timeline and lands squarely behind the caption interface in the reel. Lower third name plates and end card calls to action fail the same way, and a logo in any corner is compromised because all four are outside the safe area. None of this is about resolution. It is about placement inside a frame whose dimensions are correct, which is why exporting at 1080 by 1,920 alone does not produce a usable reel.

• Burned in subtitles near the bottom land behind the reel caption.
• Lower thirds and end cards fail for the same reason.
• All four corners are outside the safe area. Inset a logo or place it top centre.
• A face centred in the full frame sits low in the safe area. Compose for the safe box.

NoteCaptions near the bottom are the most common clipping failure, and it is placement, not resolution.

How to check without uploading

The percentages make this easy to verify against a single still. Take a frame from the busiest moment, where the text sits lowest or the subject is closest to an edge, and check it against the numbers: at 1080 by 1,920, everything that matters should sit between 269 pixels from the top and 672 pixels from the bottom, with 65 pixels clear on each side. Viewing that still full screen on a phone next to the app shows the same overlays a test upload would, so no upload is needed. Note that these figures come from advertising guidance, but the interface that overlays an organic post is identical whether or not it is promoted, so they apply to everything you publish vertically.

• Check a still from the busiest moment against the percentage margins.
• At 1080 by 1,920: 269 px from the top, 672 px from the bottom, 65 px per side.
• View the still full screen on a phone to see the real overlays.
• The figures come from ad guidance, but organic posts carry the same interface.

NoteA single still checked on a phone shows the real overlays without uploading.