What size should a profile picture be?

Profile photos are cropped to a circle and shown tiny. Here is the size and shape that works nearly everywhere and how to make one that stays sharp.

Last updated September 21, 2026

A profile picture is the smallest image you’ll ever care about. It is shown in a circle a few dozen pixels across, next to your name, on every comment and message. The rules for making one that looks good are simple and almost all of them come from those two facts: small and round.

The size that works everywhere

Upload a square, at least 400 by 400 pixels. Every major platform accepts that and none display profile pictures larger, so it stays crisp even on high-resolution phone screens. Going up to 1000 by 1000 does no harm. Specific platforms publish their own recommended sizes and change them from time to time, but a square of that size fits all of them.

The image resizer can hit an exact size and has presets for common platforms. It scales in steps rather than in one jump, which keeps edges clean instead of shimmering.

Crop for the circle

Most sites display the square as a circle, so the corners disappear. Before resizing, crop the photo to a square with your face in the centre and a little space above your head. If you want to see exactly what the circle will show, the circle crop tool makes a round version with transparent corners, which is also what you want for a website’s team page.

Make yourself stand out

A busy background competes with your face at small sizes. Two quick fixes:

• Replace the background. Remove background cuts you out and puts you on white, a brand colour or a blurred version of the original. See how to remove the background from a photo for the details.
• Add a border. A thin coloured ring from add border separates the photo from the page, which helps on sites with a white background.

Don’t start small

The most common mistake is starting from a small image, such as a crop from a group photo or a picture saved from a chat app and enlarging it. Enlarging can’t add detail that wasn’t captured, so the result is soft. Always start from the original photo and resize down. And if a site says your photo is too large, the fix is in your photo is too large to email: reduce the dimensions first.