or drag one here. Nothing is uploaded — the whole check happens in your browser.
Why a post that looked right arrives wrong
Instagram accepts a narrow band of shapes: 1.91:1 at the widest, 4:5 at the tallest. Hand it anything else and it centre-crops without asking. That alone catches most people out — a 9:16 graphic made for Stories loses its top and bottom the moment it goes to the feed instead.
Then the profile grid crops a second time, to a different shape again. So a post can look right in the feed and still lose someone’s head on your grid, which is the version anyone visiting your profile sees first. And on a Reel, the caption, the audio strip and the action buttons sit on top of the picture, over roughly the top and bottom of the frame.
Three different crops, on the same picture, in three places people will see it. This shows you all of them before you post rather than after.
How to use it
- Drop in the image you are about to post. Any JPG, PNG, WebP or GIF.
- Read the percentages. Each preview says how much of your image is cut off in that place. Anything above about 20% is usually worth reframing.
- Check the shaded bands on the Reels preview. Whatever sits under them is behind Instagram’s own buttons and will not be readable.
- Reframe and re-export at 1080 × 1350 if you want the most screen in the feed, keeping anything important away from the edges so the grid crop is survivable.
Crop is one rule of several
Aspect ratio is the rule people meet first, because it is the one you can see. Instagram enforces several others through its publishing API that reject a post outright rather than adjusting it — JPEG only, ten images to a carousel, and a Business account before any video will go out. The full list is here.
Seeing the whole grid, not one picture
Cropping is the small version of a bigger problem: you cannot tell what a month of posts looks like together until they are already published. That is what Ninecast does. Your content calendar stays in Notion or Airtable, and a real three-across grid sits beside it, updating as you reorder rows — so you see the feed before it exists, and each row publishes itself on its scheduled date.
Words run into their own limits — 2,200 characters, 30 hashtags, and a feed that hides everything after the first line or so. The caption checker does for those what this page does for pictures, and needs no account either.
If you run social for other people, the agency setup gives every client their own planner and grid on one link; if you run it for yourself, it is the same product set up for one person. There is a full guide to how it works, and you can start a free trial without a card.
A note on the numbers
The feed ratios are Instagram’s documented limits. The safe areas for Reels come from Meta’s own creative guidance and are approximate — Instagram rearranges its interface, and what a button covers on a tall phone differs from a short one. Treat the shaded bands as “do not put anything important here” rather than as an exact measurement.
Questions that follow
What aspect ratios does Instagram allow for a feed post?
From 1.91:1 at the widest to 4:5 at the tallest. Anything outside that band is centre-cropped when you post it, so a 9:16 graphic loses its top and bottom and a wide panorama loses its sides.
Why does my post look different on my profile grid?
The grid crops a second time, to its own shape, independently of how the post appears in the feed. A 4:5 image that looks right in the feed is trimmed again on the grid, which is why headroom and captions near the edge disappear there first.
What size should an Instagram post be?
1080 × 1350 pixels is the tallest a feed post can be and takes up the most screen, which is why most people default to it. 1080 × 1080 is the safest for anything centred, and 1080 × 1920 is full screen for Reels and Stories.
Where do Instagram’s buttons cover a Reel?
Roughly the top 250 pixels and bottom 420 pixels of a 1080 × 1920 frame, plus a strip up the right-hand side for the like, comment and share buttons. Stories are more forgiving, at around 250 pixels top and bottom. These are guidance rather than a guarantee, and Instagram moves them.
Is my image uploaded anywhere?
No. The check runs entirely in your browser using a canvas. The image never leaves your device, is never sent to a server, and is not stored. There is no upload endpoint behind this page at all.
Do I need an account to use it?
No. The crop checker is free and needs no account. Ninecast, the scheduling tool it belongs to, is separate and has its own free trial.
Try it on your own calendar
30 days free. No card, no password, no account. The guide walks through setup in ten minutes.
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