What aspect ratio for Instagram Reels?
The short answer is 9:16, exported at 1080 by 1920. The longer answer is about safe zones, cropping, and why a clip that looked fine in your editor arrives with the caption sitting on your subject's face.
By Thomas, founder of CutScore · Updated June 2026
The ratio itself is the easy bit. 9:16 is just "tall phone screen," and almost every camera app shoots it by default now. The part that catches people is everything that happens after the upload button. Instagram does not show your Reel on a clean rectangle. It lays its own interface on top: buttons stacked down the right side, your username and caption across the bottom, sometimes an audio tag and a follow prompt too.
So you export a perfectly framed 9:16 clip, your subject neatly centred, your caption sitting low because it looked tidy in the editor. Then Instagram puts a "Follow" button and three lines of text right on top of it. Now half your words are unreadable and the bottom of your subject's chin is behind a share icon. The video was technically the right size. It was still framed wrong for the place it lives.
I have shipped this exact mistake. A Reel I was quite proud of had its on-screen text neatly aligned to the bottom third, which is great advice for a film and terrible advice for a Reel. Nobody could read the punchline. So the real question is not just what ratio, it is where is it safe to put things. Both answers are below.
The exact Reels size, and what happens to other ratios.
9:16 at 1080 by 1920 is the one to export. Here is how every common ratio behaves once it becomes a Reel, so you know what you are giving up if you do not commit to vertical.
| Ratio | Pixel size (1080 wide) | What Instagram does with it as a Reel |
|---|---|---|
| 9:16 (vertical) | 1080 × 1920 | Fills the screen edge to edge. This is the target. Compose and export here. |
| 4:5 (portrait) | 1080 × 1350 | Centred with padding top and bottom, or cropped in. Fine for the grid, not ideal for a Reel. |
| 1:1 (square) | 1080 × 1080 | Floats in the middle of a tall frame with big gaps above and below. Wastes most of the screen. |
| 16:9 (landscape) | 1920 × 1080 | A thin strip in a sea of black, or cropped hard into the centre. Avoid for Reels. |
Wrong ratio, caption in the UI zone, subject behind the buttons. CutScore flags all three before you post, with the timestamp and the pixels to move.
Where Instagram covers your frame.
The bottom: caption, username, audio tag
The lower portion of a Reel is the busiest part of the screen. Your username, the caption, the audio attribution and often a follow prompt all stack across roughly the bottom 15 to 20 percent of the frame. On a 1920-pixel-tall export, that is around 250 to 350 pixels from the bottom edge. Keep your own captions, lower thirds and any text you actually want read above that line. If your subject's face drifts into the bottom third, expect a button on their chin.
The right edge: like, comment, share
The action buttons run vertically up the right side, taking maybe the right 10 to 12 percent of the width. On a 1080-wide frame that is roughly the rightmost 120 to 130 pixels. Anything important on that edge (a logo, a key part of your subject, burned-in text) competes with an icon. Pull your composition slightly left, or just keep the right strip clear. The middle of the frame is the only part you fully own.
The top: less busy, but not empty
The top of the frame is the calmest zone, but it is not entirely yours either. On some devices a notch or a status bar nibbles the very top, and Instagram occasionally floats a small prompt up there. A safe habit is to leave around 100 to 130 pixels of breathing room at the top before any text. It is less critical than the bottom, but a headline jammed to the very top edge tends to feel cramped anyway.
A simple rule that survives interface changes
Instagram moves its buttons around more often than anyone would like, so memorising exact pixels is a losing game. The rule that ages well: keep everything you need a viewer to read or see inside the centre column of the frame, away from the bottom fifth and the right edge. If a Reel still works with a rough rectangle blocked out over the bottom and right, you are safe. This is exactly the kind of framing and on-screen-text check that sits inside what we analyze.
Here is a real CutScore report on a vertical clip: aspect ratio, safe-zone framing, caption readability, loudness, all scored with timestamps and fixes.
If you only fix three things.
Most Reels that look "off" are not a ratio problem at all. They are a framing problem. Fix these three and your vertical video stops fighting the interface.
By eye, by overlay, or in one pass.
Watch it on a real phone
Post it, or send yourself a draft, and watch the actual Reel inside Instagram. Free and honest. The downside is it is after the fact: if the caption sits on your subject, you find out once it is live, and you have to re-export and repost.
Use a safe-zone overlay
Drop a Reels safe-zone template over your timeline so you can see the button and caption areas while you edit. Accurate, and it catches problems early. The cost is keeping the overlay current as Instagram shifts its interface, and remembering to use it every single time.
Let a coach flag it in one pass
Hand the file to CutScore. It confirms the aspect ratio, flags any subject or text drifting into the UI zones, and checks the rest of the craft (loudness, exposure, captions) against the platform standard, with a 0 to 100 score and timestamps. See a sample report.
Frequently asked.
Stop guessing before you post.
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