Open Graph image size: the right dimensions for each platform
·4 min read
The safe og image size is 1200 by 630 pixels, a 1.91:1 ratio, saved as a JPG or PNG under 600 KB. That one file meets the published minimums of Facebook, LinkedIn, X and WhatsApp, and the 600 KB ceiling is the strictest file size limit among them. Declare it with og:image:width, og:image:height and og:image:alt, and keep text and faces away from the edges so a platform that crops to a different ratio does not cut them off.
Make one image per page at that size. Per-platform variants add work and rarely change what people see.
Open Graph image size by platform
Each platform publishes its own limits, and they disagree. The table lists only figures the platform states in its own developer or help docs.
| Platform | Size | Ratio | Max file size | Formats | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1200 x 630 recommended, 600 x 315 for the large card, 200 x 200 minimum | 1.91:1 | 8 MB | Not stated | Meta image guide | |
| 1200 x 627 minimum, under 401 px wide shows as a thumbnail | 1.91:1 | 5 MB | Not stated | LinkedIn Help | |
| X (summary_large_image) | 300 x 157 minimum, 4096 x 4096 maximum | 2:1 | 5 MB | JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF. No SVG | X Cards docs |
| 300 px wide or more | 4:1 or narrower | 600 KB | Not stated | WhatsApp link previews |
Slack and Discord are missing because I found no image size in either company's developer docs. The sizes quoted for them online come from third-party guides.
A few details from those docs matter more than the headline numbers.
- LinkedIn's 1200 x 627 is a minimum, not a target. 1200 x 630 clears it by three pixels.
- X uses only the first frame of an animated GIF.
- WhatsApp wants the page's
<head>within the first 300 KB of the HTML. - Facebook's preview comes from the og:image, and the Facebook Sharing Debugger guide covers refreshing it once it is cached. LinkedIn's equivalent is in the LinkedIn Post Inspector guide.
Why 1200 x 630 is the safe default
1200 x 630 sits at or above every published minimum and matches the 1.91:1 ratio that Facebook and LinkedIn both recommend. Meta says images as close to 1.91:1 as possible display in Feed without cropping.
X is the one exception. Its large card uses 2:1, so a 1200 x 630 image loses about 30 pixels of height to fit 1200 x 600. That is why the safe zone below matters more than chasing exact ratios. You could serve X its own 1200 x 600 file through twitter:image, but that is one more file to keep in sync for a crop few people notice.
File size is where the default most often breaks. A PNG screenshot at 1200 x 630 can easily pass 1 MB, which is fine for Facebook and LinkedIn but over WhatsApp's 600 KB. Export JPG at a sensible quality, or a flat-color PNG, and check the bytes before you ship it.
Safe zones for cropping
No platform publishes a pixel safe zone, so treat this as working practice. Keep the headline, logo and any face inside the central area, with roughly 60 pixels clear on every side of a 1200 x 630 canvas. That margin absorbs X's 2:1 crop and the rounding some apps apply to card corners.
Small images suffer more than cropped ones. Facebook shows images under 600 x 315 as a smaller preview, and LinkedIn shows images under 401 pixels wide as a thumbnail. At thumbnail size, small text becomes noise. Use large type, a short phrase at most, and let og:title carry the words.
og:image:width, og:image:height and og:image:alt
The Open Graph protocol defines width, height and alt as structured properties of og:image. Set all three on every page.
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.example.com/og/pricing-v3.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:type" content="image/jpeg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="Pricing table with three plans side by side">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:image:alt" content="Pricing table with three plans side by side">Width and height. Meta says these tags let its crawler render the image immediately instead of downloading and processing it first. Without them, the first share of a new URL can show no picture. The values must match the real file. A tag claiming 1200 x 630 on an 800 x 800 image gives the crawler the wrong layout.
Alt. The protocol says a page with og:image should specify og:image:alt, and that it describes what is in the image, not a caption. X reads twitter:image:alt separately and caps it at 420 characters.
The image URL. Use an absolute https address. Facebook caches images by URL, so a new image needs a new file name, like the -v3 above.
For the rest of the Open Graph tags, see our Open Graph tags guide.
Check your og image size and tags
Our Open Graph checker fetches a page, reads its og: and twitter: tags, downloads the share image and previews the card. It reports the image's HTTP status, content type, format, pixel size and file size. It flags images under 200 x 200, images under 600 pixels wide that render as small thumbnails, ratios outside roughly 1.7:1 to 2.1:1 that will be cropped, files over Facebook's 8 MB and X's 5 MB limits, and formats other than JPG, PNG, GIF and WebP. It also flags a missing og:image:alt and a missing or invalid twitter:card, and checks a separate twitter:image on its own when it differs.
It does not check WhatsApp's 600 KB limit or compare your og:image:width and og:image:height values with the real file, so read those two off the report yourself. It reads raw HTML, so tags added by JavaScript are invisible to it, and it cannot refresh a platform's cached preview. A run costs 5 credits.