The short version for Facebook Feed: images are JPG or PNG at 1440 x 1800, 4:5, up to 30MB. Video is MP4 or MOV at the same dimensions, up to 4GB. Carousels take 2 to 10 cards at 1080 x 1080. Everything below comes from Meta's own guides, checked on 21 August 2026.
Every specs article you find is a copy of a copy, and most are wrong by the time you read them. So two things about this page. Every figure came from Meta's published guides rather than from another blog, and the date it was checked is stated so you can judge for yourself whether to trust it.
The one thing to understand before the numbers
Specs are per placement, not per platform, and this catches people constantly.
Meta's ads guide shows requirements for a specific placement at a time, and the figures below are for Facebook Feed unless stated otherwise. Stories, Reels, Marketplace, Audience Network and the Instagram placements have their own requirements, and the differences are not cosmetic.
The practical consequence: an asset built to Feed specs and pushed into a Stories placement gets cropped, and the crop is decided by a machine rather than by you. Text near the edge disappears. Logos get cut.
If you are running one asset across many placements, design for the tightest constraint and leave margin. Meta maintains a reference page on aspect ratios for ad placements that is worth having open when you plan creative.
Image ads
From Meta's image ad guide, for Facebook Feed.
| Spec | Requirement |
|---|---|
| File type | JPG or PNG |
| Resolution | 1440 x 1800 pixels |
| Aspect ratio | 4:5 |
| Aspect ratio tolerance | 3% |
| Maximum file size | 30MB |
| Minimum width | 600 pixels |
| Minimum height | 750 pixels |
| Primary text | 50 to 150 characters |
| Headline | 27 characters |
Two notes worth having.
The 3% aspect ratio tolerance is the reason an asset that is a few pixels out still runs. It is not permission to be sloppy, since anything beyond it gets rejected or cropped.
Panoramas and 360 degree photos are supported on Facebook as interactive experiences for certain objectives, but they need the camera metadata that 360-ready devices produce. Exporting a wide image from an editor does not make it a 360 photo.
Image ads on Instagram Feed
The same format, a different placement, and the differences are not trivial. From Meta's Instagram Feed image guide.
| Spec | Instagram Feed | Facebook Feed |
|---|---|---|
| File type | JPG or PNG | JPG or PNG |
| Resolution | 1440 x 1800 pixels | 1440 x 1800 pixels |
| Aspect ratio | 4:5 | 4:5 |
| Maximum file size | 30MB | 30MB |
| Minimum width | 500 pixels | 600 pixels |
| Aspect ratio tolerance | 1% | 3% |
| Primary text | 125 characters | 50 to 150 characters |
| Headline | 40 characters | 27 characters |
| Minimum aspect ratio | 400 x 500 | Not stated |
| Maximum aspect ratio | 191 x 100 | Not stated |
| Maximum hashtags | 30 | Not stated |
The dimensions match. Almost everything else does not.
The headline difference is the one that costs people work. A headline written to Instagram's 40 characters is truncated on Facebook, where the limit is 27. If you run one asset across both, the Facebook limit is the one to write to.
The tolerance difference matters at the other end. Instagram allows 1% deviation from the stated aspect ratio against Facebook's 3%, so an asset that squeaks through on Facebook can be rejected or cropped on Instagram. Export exactly to ratio rather than relying on tolerance.
This single comparison is the reason to check specs per placement rather than trusting a general "Meta ad specs" table, including tables like the ones on this page.
Video ads
From Meta's video ad guide, for Facebook Feed.
| Spec | Requirement |
|---|---|
| File type | MP4, MOV or GIF |
| Compression | H.264, square pixels, fixed frame rate, progressive scan |
| Audio | Stereo AAC at 128kbps or higher |
| Resolution | 1440 x 1800 pixels |
| Aspect ratio | 4:5 |
| Duration | 1 second to 241 minutes |
| Maximum file size | 4GB |
| Minimum width | 120 pixels |
| Minimum height | 120 pixels |
| Captions | Optional, recommended |
| Sound | Optional, recommended |
| Primary text | 50 to 150 characters |
| Headline | 27 characters |
Meta also specifies that videos should not contain edit lists or special boxes in file containers. That sounds obscure and it is the cause of a good share of mysterious upload failures, usually from files exported by certain editing tools.
On captions being "optional but recommended": treat that as a requirement rather than a suggestion. A large share of feed video is watched without sound, and a video that only works with audio is a video most viewers do not receive.
The 241 minute maximum is real and irrelevant. Nobody should be running a four hour feed ad.
Carousel ads
From Meta's carousel ad guide, for Facebook Feed.
| Spec | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Cards | 2 to 10 |
| Image file type | JPG or PNG |
| Image resolution | At least 1080 x 1080 pixels |
| Image aspect ratio | 1:1 |
| Image maximum size | 30MB |
| Aspect ratio tolerance | 3% |
| Video file type | MP4, MOV or GIF |
| Video maximum size | 4GB |
| Video duration | 1 second to 240 minutes |
| Primary text | 80 characters |
| Headline | 20 characters |
| Description | 18 characters |
| Landing page URL | Required |
The character limits are the part people get wrong, because they are considerably tighter than single image ads. Headline drops from 27 characters to 20, and there is an 18 character description that does not exist on a standard image ad.
Eighteen characters is about two words. Write it before you design the cards, not after, because it is the constraint that will actually bite.
Note also that carousel is square at 1:1 while the single image placement above is 4:5. Reusing a Feed image asset directly in a carousel means a crop.
Collection ads
From Meta's collection ad guide, for Facebook Feed.
| Spec | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Structure | Cover image or video, then 3 product images |
| Instant Experience | Required |
| Image file type | JPG or PNG |
| Video file type | MP4, MOV or GIF |
| Resolution | At least 1080 x 1080 pixels |
| Aspect ratio | 1.91:1 to 1:1 |
| Image maximum size | 30MB |
| Video maximum size | 4GB |
| Primary text | 125 characters |
| Headline | 40 characters |
| Landing page URL | Required |
The structural requirement is the one to plan around. A collection ad requires an Instant Experience, which is a full screen destination that opens when someone taps, and the cover uses the first media asset from that Instant Experience.
So you are not building an ad, you are building a small landing experience and the ad is its cover. Businesses budget for the creative and then discover the Instant Experience is a separate build.
The character limits, side by side
This is the table I actually use, because it is the thing that differs most between formats and it is the thing that gets designed around last.
| Format | Primary text | Headline | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Image | 50 to 150 | 27 | Not shown |
| Video | 50 to 150 | 27 | Not shown |
| Carousel | 80 | 20 | 18 |
| Collection | 125 | 40 | Not shown |
Write the headline first. A 20 character carousel headline is a genuine constraint, and copy written at 40 characters and then cut to 20 reads like copy that was cut.
Worth noting the primary text figure on image and video ads is expressed as a range rather than a hard cap. Longer text is accepted and gets truncated with a "See more", which most people do not tap. Treat 150 as the practical limit for anything that has to be read.
Safe zones, and why your text keeps getting cut
Meeting the aspect ratio is not the same as your content surviving.
Vertical placements overlay interface on top of your creative. Profile name and controls sit at the top, the call to action and description sit at the bottom, and none of that is visible in your design tool. An asset that looks balanced in the editor arrives with its headline behind a button.
The working rule for full-screen vertical placements is to keep anything that must be read inside the middle portion of the frame, leaving roughly the top and bottom eighth clear. That is a design habit rather than a published number, and it costs nothing to adopt.
The related trap is a single asset pushed across many placements. Meta will crop a 4:5 image to fit a 9:16 placement, and it decides where to crop. Text near an edge is the first casualty.
Two ways to handle it. Either supply placement-specific assets, which is more work and always looks better, or design one asset with enough margin that every crop still works. What does not work is designing to the edge and hoping.
Why uploads fail
Four causes account for most of it, and only one is about dimensions.
Container problems. Meta specifies that videos should not contain edit lists or special boxes in file containers. Certain editing tools add these on export. Re-encoding to plain H.264 with square pixels, a fixed frame rate, progressive scan and stereo AAC audio usually fixes an upload that fails for no visible reason.
Aspect ratio outside tolerance. Facebook Feed allows 3%, Instagram Feed allows 1%. An asset a few pixels out passes one and fails the other.
Colour profile and transparency. PNGs carrying transparency or an unusual color profile can render with artifacts even when they upload. Flatten to a solid background and export sRGB.
Genuine file size. 30MB for images and 4GB for video are generous, and a file approaching either is usually a sign something was exported wrong rather than a file that needs to be that large.
A pre-flight checklist
Six checks, in the order worth doing them.
- Which placements will this actually run in? Check the delivery settings, not the intention. This decides everything below.
- Does the aspect ratio match exactly? Not within tolerance. Exactly.
- Is the headline within the tightest limit across the placements it will run in? 27 characters on Facebook Feed, 20 on carousel.
- Is anything important near an edge? Assume a crop and assume interface overlay.
- Does it work without sound? Most feed video is watched silently, and captions are the difference between a video that communicates and one that does not.
- Does it look like an advertisement? The only one on this list that is a judgment call, and the one that most affects performance.
The equivalent reference for X, where the image limit is six times tighter, is in the X ad specs post.
What these specs will not tell you
Whether the ad works, which is a different problem and the one that actually costs money.
Meeting spec means the file uploads and renders correctly. It says nothing about whether the creative earns attention, and I have audited plenty of accounts where every asset was technically perfect and the campaign was failing for reasons no specification addresses.
The three that matter more than pixel dimensions, in my experience:
What conversion event the campaign optimizes for. If it is landing page views, the system is finding people who load a page and leave. That single setting outweighs every number on this page, and I went through it in the metrics post.
How many campaigns the budget is split across. Meta needs roughly 50 optimization events per ad set per week before costs stabilize. Perfect creative in six starved campaigns still fails, and the arithmetic is in the ad budget guide.
Whether the creative looks like an advertisement. Assets built for a website and pushed into a feed read as advertising in a place people scroll to avoid advertising.
Specs are a floor, not a strategy. Clear the floor and then spend your attention on the three above, which is roughly the order the paid team at Inertia Digital Marketing works through a new account.
How to keep this current
Assume any specs article is out of date, including this one.
Meta changes these without announcement, and the change that matters is usually a recommended resolution or an aspect ratio rather than something dramatic. The pages linked throughout this post are the source, and they take a minute to check.
My practical habit: check the guide for the specific placement before any new creative build, rather than working from a saved template. Templates are where old specs go to survive.
This page was checked against Meta's guides on 21 August 2026. If you are reading it much later than that, verify before you build.
What to do on Monday
Open your ad account and find one running asset. Check its dimensions and its aspect ratio against the format it is running in, and check where it is being shown, not just what it was made for.
Then read your carousel headlines, if you run carousels. Anything over 20 characters is being truncated, and truncated headlines are a quiet and very common waste.
FAQ
What are the current Meta ad specs? For Facebook Feed, images are JPG or PNG at 1440 x 1800 pixels in 4:5 up to 30MB, video is MP4 or MOV at the same dimensions up to 4GB, carousels take 2 to 10 cards at 1080 x 1080 in 1:1, and collection ads need a cover plus three product images and an Instant Experience. Checked 21 August 2026.
What size should a Facebook ad image be? Meta's guide gives 1440 x 1800 pixels at a 4:5 ratio for Facebook Feed, with a minimum of 600 x 750 and a 3% aspect ratio tolerance. Other placements differ.
How many characters can a Meta ad have? It varies by format. Image and video ads take 50 to 150 characters of primary text and a 27 character headline. Carousels are tighter at 80, 20 and an 18 character description. Collection ads allow 125 and 40.
Do the same specs apply to Instagram and Stories? No. Meta's guides are organized by placement, and the figures here are for Facebook Feed. Stories, Reels and the Instagram placements have their own requirements, so an asset built for Feed will be cropped if pushed elsewhere.
Why did my video fail to upload to Meta? A common cause is edit lists or special boxes in the file container, which Meta specifies videos should not contain. These are added by some editing tools on export. Re-encoding with H.264, square pixels, a fixed frame rate and stereo AAC audio usually resolves it.
About the author
Adam Palmer is President of Inertia Digital Marketing, a digital marketing agency working with clients from small business to multi-location enterprise and franchise operations. Across 15 years he has managed more than $50 million in paid digital campaigns, and he writes here about what actually moves numbers rather than what sounds good in a strategy deck. Inertia built and maintains Social Fonts, which is free and always will be.