Open Graph image size: the 1200 x 630 guide

There is no single official Open Graph image size. The protocol defines a tag, not a canvas. The 1200 x 630 number is a convention that grew around the 1.91:1 link card used by Facebook, LinkedIn, and most other platforms. It is the size that survives the most containers with the least cropping.

Open Graph image sizes by platform

The three headline numbers people quote, 1200 x 630, 1200 x 628, and 1200 x 627, are all the same 1.91:1 shape with different rounding. A two- or three-pixel difference is invisible after compression. Do not maintain three files for the sake of matching a table.

Why 1200 pixels wide is the sweet spot

• Wide enough for a headline. At 1200 px, a 72 px headline has room for six to ten words without wrapping into a wall of text.
• Large enough for retina displays. A 1200 px file stays acceptable when the card is rendered at 600 CSS pixels wide on a 2x screen.
• Small enough to load quickly. A well-compressed 1200 x 630 JPG is usually 80-250 KB. That matters when a chat client fetches it on a phone.
• Close to the most common crop. The 1.91:1 shape is used by the largest number of surfaces, so it loses the least in the places that crop it differently.

While 1200 x 630 is enough for almost every case, exporting at 2400 x 1260 keeps more detail for high-density displays and gives you room to crop a square variant later. The trade-off is file size. If you go larger, compress it back down; a 2400 px PNG can easily cross 1 MB.

The safe area that survives every crop

Platforms do not just scale your image. They crop it to fit their own container. X may show something closer to 2:1, a messaging client may show a square, and a dense feed may show a thumbnail the size of a postage stamp. Design for the smallest and most aggressive crop, not the widest one.

File format and weight

• Target under 1 MB. Facebook and X accept larger files, but smaller images fail less often and load faster in chat clients.
• Use sRGB. CMYK files can shift colour or fail to render.
• Avoid transparency. Some platforms composite transparent PNGs onto black, others onto white. The result is unpredictable.
• Do not upscale a small image. A 600 px file stretched to 1200 px looks soft, and some platforms refuse to show a large card.
• Export at 1x for most cards. A 1200 x 630 file is already 2x for a 600 px card. Exporting at 3x is usually waste.

Designing for the crop, not the canvas

The most common OG image mistake is treating the 1200 x 630 canvas as the final composition. It is not. It is the largest version of a composition that has to work at several sizes. Put the idea in the centre, keep the decoration at the edges, and test the result at 300 px wide before you publish.

1. 01Place the headline in the middle of the canvas, not against the left or right edge.
2. 02Keep the logo inside the safe area. A corner mark is the first thing a square crop removes.
3. 03Use one type size for the headline. A second, much smaller line can work as a kicker, but it will disappear in a thumbnail.
4. 04Leave negative space. A card with one strong line and a lot of air reads better at small sizes than a dense layout.
5. 05Check the card on a phone, in a chat app, and in a feed. Those are the places it will actually appear.

Square, vertical, and story sizes

Not every surface wants a wide card. Pinterest pins are 2:3, Instagram stories are 9:16, and some messaging clients show a square. Those are separate assets, not different crops of the same file. If a channel matters to you, make a variant for it and point the platform's own image tag at that variant.

How to check your image size

In a browser, right-click the image and choose Inspect, or open the image URL in a new tab and read the dimensions in the title bar. On a Mac, Preview's Inspector shows the pixel size. On Windows, File Explorer's Details tab does the same. For a live page, the Facebook Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn Post Inspector show the scraped image URL and dimensions, which is the number that actually matters.