The Only Social Share Image Size You Need (and What to Put On It)

Why one size is enough

The multi-size chart exists because it conflates two different things: images you upload to a platform, and images a platform fetches from your page. An Instagram post you upload has its own dimensions. A link preview does not — every platform that reads Open Graph pulls the same og:image from your page and fits it into its own card.

Those cards differ in size but agree closely on shape: about 1.91:1, landscape. So one file at 1200 × 630 lands correctly everywhere, and maintaining separate images per platform buys you nothing except a maintenance burden and four places to get it wrong.

The specification, in full

• Dimensions: 1200 × 630 pixels. Exactly this if you can; the ratio matters more than the absolute numbers.
• Minimum before downgrade: 600 × 315. Below that, most platforms switch to a small square thumbnail layout instead of the large card.
• File size: under about 1 MB. Some crawlers give up on large files and you get no image at all — a failure that looks identical to having no tag.
• Format: JPG or PNG. WebP support is inconsistent across crawlers; it is not worth the risk for one file per page.
• URL: absolute, https://, publicly reachable with no login, no hotlink protection, no user-agent filtering.
• Declared in: og:image. Add og:image:width and og:image:height too — it lets platforms lay out the card before the image finishes downloading.

One extra tag worth including: og:image:alt. It describes the image for screen readers on platforms that surface it, and it costs a line.

What to actually put on the card

Sizing is the easy half. The card still has to earn a click in a feed that is scrolling past it.

Respect the safe zone

Different platforms crop the edges differently, and WhatsApp crops hardest of all — its compact preview can take a noticeable bite from both sides. Keep text and anything essential well inside the central area, with generous margins. Assume roughly 10% around every edge can disappear and you will never be surprised.

Text, not decoration

The most effective share cards are close to a slide: a short line of large type stating the promise, and not much else. Large enough to read at thumbnail size on a phone, which is smaller than you think — check it by shrinking the image to about 200 pixels wide and looking at it from arm's length.

The logo is not the card

A centred logo on a coloured background is the most common share image and among the least effective. It tells a scrolling reader who you are, which they did not ask, instead of what they get, which is what decides the click. Put the logo small in a corner and give the space to the promise.

Do not repeat the headline exactly

The card sits directly above or below your title text on most platforms. Duplicating it wastes the image entirely. Use the card for the sharper, shorter version — the claim, the number, the question — and let the title carry the detail.

Templates worth building once

The default site card

One image, referenced by every page that has nothing better. It should say what the business does in a few words rather than showing a logo alone, because it is doing the work on every page you never customised.

The blog post template

A background, a category label, and space for a headline of up to about eight words. Then every new post is a two-minute text change. This is what makes per-post cards realistic instead of aspirational.

The service or landing page card

Worth designing individually. These are the pages you promote and pay to send traffic to, and they are the ones people paste into Slack when deciding whether to hire you.

The launch card

Designed once, checked in all three previews, and cached correctly before the announcement goes out. Everything else on this list can be improved later. This one cannot.

Why check the crop before exporting

You cannot see a crop in your design tool. The artboard shows the whole image; the feed shows a slice of it, at a different aspect ratio per platform, at a size no design tool simulates.

The Open Graph previewer renders the Facebook, LinkedIn and X layouts side by side from whatever image URL you give it. Two minutes there tells you the thing no export dialog will: that your subheading vanishes on X, that the right edge of your headline is gone on WhatsApp, that the image is 900 pixels wide and has been downgraded to a thumbnail.

It loads the image directly in your browser, so an unreachable path, a hotlink-protected host or a relative URL fails visibly in front of you rather than silently in production. And it costs nothing, needs no account, and does not upload what you type — useful when the card is for a product that has not been announced.

What it cannot tell you is whether the card is persuasive. That is a judgement call, and any tool scoring your creative out of 100 is generating a number, not a finding.

Shipping it

1. Export at 1200 × 630, compressed to under 1 MB, with essentials inside the safe zone.
2. Upload it and confirm the URL is publicly reachable in a private browser window with no session.
3. Add the tags — og:image, width, height, alt — using the meta tag generator so the rest of the head block gets written at the same time.
4. Preview all three layouts and shrink the image to thumbnail size to check the text still reads.
5. Warm the caches with Facebook's Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn's Post Inspector before you share the link anywhere.

Then treat the template as an asset. The first card takes an hour. Every card after it takes two minutes, and consistent cards across a site do more for how established you look than most redesigns.

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