It becomes 9:16
Every cover fills a vertical 9:16 frame. A landscape 4:3 photo keeps only its middle 42% in width.
See every crop before you post.
Instagram shows your reel cover five different ways. Drop in an image or the reel itself and see each one, with the exact pixels it keeps and how sharp it stays.
Your cover
What gets hidden
Cut on the profile gridCut on ExploreCovered by buttons and caption in the feed
Only the middle 3:4 survives. The top and bottom 240 px of your cover are hidden.
Result
Three things happen to every cover.
Before anyone sees it, Instagram fits your image to a vertical frame, scales it to a fixed size, then crops it again for each place it shows up.
It is scaled to 1080 × 1920
Whichever side runs out first sets the scale. A 1440 × 1080 photo is limited by its height and gets stretched 1.78×. That stretch is where blur comes from.
Each surface crops again
The profile grid shows only the middle 3:4, hiding 240 px at the top and bottom. The feed covers the lower fifth with your caption and buttons.
Every surface, side by side.
Your current cover on each surface, at its real proportions. Change the cover in the checker and these update.
Plan the whole grid.
Drop in your next twelve covers and see your profile the way visitors will. Drag to reorder, fix the ones that lose their hook, then post in the order that looks best.
Open the grid plannerGuides
Short, exact answers to the questions creators ask most about covers.
Questions
What size should a reel cover be?
1080 × 1920 pixels, 9:16. Keep text and faces between y 240 and y 1680 so the 3:4 profile grid keeps them, and clear of the bottom fifth, where the feed shows your caption and buttons.
Why is my cover blurry?
Instagram scaled it up. If your image is smaller than 1080 × 1920 once it's fitted to 9:16, it gets stretched, and the stretch shows most in the full-screen Reels feed. Small grid tiles usually hide it.
Why is my text cut off on my profile?
Since early 2025 the profile grid uses 3:4 tiles. On a 9:16 cover they show only the middle 1080 × 1440, so anything in the top or bottom 240 px disappears.
Can I check a video instead of an image?
Yes. Drop the reel itself into the checker and scrub to the frame you want as the cover.
Is my image uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything happens in your browser, and the file never leaves your device.
How accurate is it?
The crops follow Instagram's ratios exactly. Sharpness assumes a 3× iPhone screen about 393 points wide and a 2× laptop display, so treat the clarity numbers as close estimates.