Instagram Profile Picture Size

320 by 320, square — and then shown as a circle at about a third of that. Two facts that decide everything about what belongs in one.

Runs on your device — images are never uploaded

Drop your images here

or click to browse — as many as you like

JPG · PNG · WebP · HEIC

Enlarging past the original cannot add detail that was never captured. The tool says so when it happens rather than quietly handing back something softer.

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How it works

Three steps, no account, and the image never leaves your computer.

STEP 01

Drop the image in

JPG, PNG, WebP or an iPhone HEIC. Several at once is fine — they all come out the same size.

STEP 02

The size is already set to 320 by 320

Change it if you need something else. Cover crops to fill, Contain fits the whole picture and pads the rest.

STEP 03

Check the preview, then save

The crop is shown before anything is written, so what you get is what you saw.

What people resize to this

A photo of yourself

Cropped close from the shoulders up, so there is a face rather than a figure.

A logo

The symbol on its own. Any tagline in it is unreadable at the size this is shown.

A group photo you want to use

Crop to one person first — a circle at 110 pixels cannot hold a group.

One square for every platform

Made once at 800 by 800 and reused, since all of them crop a square to a circle.

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A square, shown as a circle, shown small

320 by 320 pixels, square. Instagram stores it at that size, and then displays it as a circle at roughly 110 pixels across in the app — smaller still beside a comment.

Both facts matter, and the second one more than the first.

SizeRatioFile limit
320 × 320 px1:1not published

The corners are gone

A circle cut from a square throws away about 21 per cent of the image, all of it at the edges. Anything in a corner — a logo, the end of a word, half a face at the side of a group photo — is not shown to anybody.

So crop it square yourself first, deciding what the circle keeps, rather than uploading a rectangle and letting the app take the middle. The middle is rarely where the face is.

It is displayed tiny

About 110 pixels in the app, and around 32 beside a comment. At that size a full-body photo is a coloured smudge and a logo with a tagline is a grey blur.

What survives is one thing, large: a face cropped close from the shoulders up, or a symbol with no text in it. This is the same discipline a favicon needs, and for the same reason.

Why not upload something bigger

You can, and it will be resized to 320 and re-compressed. Handing over exactly 320 by 320 means the only resize is yours — though this is the one case where the difference is genuinely hard to see, because everything is tiny anyway.

Other platforms, same principle

PlatformUploadShown as
Instagram320 × 320Circle
Facebook320 × 320Circle
LinkedIn400 × 400Circle
X400 × 400Circle
YouTube800 × 800Circle
TikTok200 × 200Circle

Every one of them is a square shown as a circle. Make one good square at the largest of those sizes and it works everywhere — the resizer's preset list has each of them if you want an exact fit.

Cover or Contain, and what each throws away

Two ways to fit one shape into another, and the tool offers both.

Cover fills the frame completely and crops whatever does not fit. Nothing is distorted and nothing is padded; some of the picture is simply gone. This is what you want almost always.

Contain fits the whole image inside the frame and fills the leftover space with a colour you choose. Nothing is lost, but the picture is smaller and there are bars. Right when the whole frame matters — a poster, a diagram, a design you cannot cut.

Neither ever stretches. An image squashed to fit is the one mistake that cannot be undone by looking at it again later.

Nothing is uploaded

The resizing happens in your browser using your own processor, so the image never leaves your machine. That is why there is no file-size limit, no queue and no account, and why a batch of forty is limited by your computer rather than by somebody’s free tier.

Common questions

What size is an Instagram profile picture?

320 by 320 pixels, square. It is displayed as a circle at roughly 110 pixels in the app, and around 32 pixels beside a comment.

Why is my profile picture cropped oddly?

Because a circle cut from a square discards about 21 per cent of the image, all at the edges. Crop it square yourself and choose what the circle keeps, instead of letting the app take the middle.

Can I use the same picture everywhere?

Yes. Every major platform crops a square to a circle, so one good square works for all of them. Make it at 800 by 800 — YouTube’s size — and it is large enough for every other one.

Should the picture be a face or a logo?

Whichever it is, one thing, large. At 110 pixels a full-body photo is a smudge and a logo with a tagline is a blur. A face from the shoulders up, or a symbol with no text.

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