Open Graph image size and tags: the complete guide

The image size to use

1200 × 630 pixels, a 1.91:1 ratio, as a JPG or PNG under about 1 MB. That one image works on Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord and messaging apps, and is close enough to X's large card that it displays well there too.

Larger is fine as long as the ratio holds; 2400 × 1260 looks sharper on high-resolution screens. Smaller images still work down to a point, but Facebook, for one, shows images under 600 × 315 much smaller than a full-width card.

What each platform asks for

The difference between 1.91:1 and 2:1 is a few pixels top and bottom. X crops a 1200 × 630 image very slightly, which is why the important content belongs in the middle.

The tags every page needs

Open Graph is defined at ogp.me. Its four required properties are og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url; a description and image dimensions make the card better and faster:

<meta property="og:title" content="Trail Runner 2 Waterproof Shoe">
<meta property="og:description" content="Lightweight waterproof trail shoe with a 6 mm drop. Free returns.">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/shoes/trail-runner-2/">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/img/share/trail-runner-2.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="The Trail Runner 2 shoe on a muddy path">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Example">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">

• og:image must be an absolute URL, starting with https://. A relative path such as /img/share.jpg is ignored by several platforms.
• og:image:width and og:image:height let Facebook render the image the first time the link is shared, before it has downloaded and measured the file.
• og:type is website for most pages and article for posts.
• X reads Open Graph tags for the title, description and image when its own twitter: tags are missing, so twitter:card is the only X tag most sites need.

If a page has no Open Graph tags, platforms guess from the title tag, meta description and the first large image they find, which is often a logo or an icon. Setting the tags yourself removes the guessing.

Designing an image that survives cropping

• Keep text and faces in the middle. Some apps crop the card to a square or a narrower shape on phones. A safe area of about 630 × 630 in the centre is shown everywhere.
• Use few words, set large. The card is often seen at 300–500 pixels wide on a phone. A headline that's readable at 1200 pixels may be a blur at that size.
• Don't repeat the title. The headline is already printed under the image. Use the image for a product photo, a chart or a strong visual instead.
• Use a JPG for photos and PNG for flat graphics, and compress both. These two formats are read by every platform and app.

Why the preview doesn't update

Every platform caches share cards, and Facebook caches images by URL. If you change the tags or replace the image but keep the same file name, people keep seeing the old card.

1. Give a changed image a new URL, for example share-v2.jpg, and update og:image. Facebook recommends not deleting the old file, because existing posts still point to it.
2. Ask each platform to fetch the page again: Facebook's Sharing Debugger ("Scrape Again") and LinkedIn's Post Inspector. X and the messaging apps refresh on their own over time.
3. Check the image is reachable for crawlers: not behind a login, not blocked in robots.txt, and not served only to browsers that run JavaScript.

Posts that were shared before the fix keep their old card. The refresh only affects new shares.

How to check a page

A checker reads the page as platforms do, lists every og: and twitter: tag, loads the image to measure its real size and ratio, and shows the card as Facebook, LinkedIn and X will draw it:

To check share tags across a whole site, the website SEO audit flags pages with no og:title or og:image, which usually points to a template that's missing them.

Questions