Crop a Video for Instagram Reels
Reframe any video to 9:16 at 1080 x 1920, the shape Instagram Reels and Stories actually wants. Free, nothing to install.
- Free to start
- Nothing to install
- Up to 1GB
Crop for Instagram Reels in 3 steps
Upload your video
Drag and drop a file, or click to browse. Anything under 1GB, nothing to install.
9:16 is already selected
The crop is pre-set to 9:16 for Instagram Reels. Switch ratio in the panel if you need a different placement.
Crop and download
We process the crop on our servers. Create a free account to download.
Instagram Reels video sizes
Reels are full-screen vertical: 9:16 at 1080 x 1920. Anything narrower gets letterboxed with bars, or shown inside a small window that kills the immersion the format depends on.
Watch the safe zones. Instagram lays its own interface over the top and bottom of the frame: the caption, the audio strip and the action buttons. Keep faces, headlines and captions inside roughly the middle 80% of the height, or the UI will sit on top of them.
Cropping a landscape recording to 9:16 throws away most of the width, and the crop is taken from the centre. Check in the preview that your subject is still in frame. If it sits to one side, or the point of a screen capture is in one corner, move the picture inside the frame in the full editor instead.
Reels
Stories
Feed (portrait)
Feed (square)
| Placement | Aspect ratio | Frame size |
|---|---|---|
| Reels | 9:16 | 1080 x 1920 |
| Stories | 9:16 | 1080 x 1920 |
| Feed (portrait) | 4:5 | 1080 x 1350 |
| Feed (square) | 1:1 | 1080 x 1080 |
Cropping is not resizing
Cropping changes what is inside the frame by cutting the edges away. Resizing keeps the whole frame and changes how many pixels it is drawn with. Going from a landscape recording to a vertical post is a crop, and something has to leave the picture.
If your video is already 9:16 and you only need it at a different resolution, use the resize tool instead, it is free too and linked below.
crop for instagram reels: questions
What size should a Reel be?
1080 x 1920 pixels, a 9:16 vertical frame. That is the same size as Stories, so one crop covers both.
Where are the Reels safe zones?
Instagram overlays the caption and buttons across the bottom of the frame and the profile row across the top. Keep anything you need read inside the middle of the frame.
Is cropping for Instagram Reels free?
Yes. Crop and preview for free, then create a free account to download the result.
Do I need to install anything?
No. It opens in any browser, so you can crop for Instagram Reels from a phone as easily as from a laptop.
Does cropping reduce quality?
The kept area is cropped at source resolution and re-encoded at high quality, so it stays sharp. Cropping deep into a low-resolution source is what makes video look soft, not the crop itself.
What if my subject is not in the middle?
This tool crops from the centre, so it keeps the middle of the picture. If the subject sits to one side, open the clip in the full REQO editor, move the picture inside the new frame and export from there. That is free too.
Other presets
Everything else you can do here.
All crop video presets
Resize to a resolution
Compress for a destination
Compress a format
Rotate or flip
Change the frame rate
Change the speed
Transcribe a language
Extract audio from a format
Subtitles in another language
Convert a caption file
Need more than crop for instagram reels?
REQO is a full browser video editor: record, edit by transcript, caption and export.