Which shapes are available?

9:16, 4:5, 1:1 and 16:9, and all four are on every plan.

Which fills a phone screen?

9:16, because it matches the display. It also keeps the least of a wide recording.

Is 4:5 a compromise or a choice?

A choice, and often the right one. It keeps noticeably more width than 9:16 while still taking most of the screen.

When is square worth it?

When one clip is going to several places and you would rather not produce a version for each.

Does the shape change the price?

It does not. The shape is a choice, not a tier.

Aspect Ratio Cheat Sheet for Social

Which shape goes where?

9:16 for vertical feeds, where it fills the screen entirely. 4:5 for in feed posts, where it is tall enough to dominate without losing as much width. 1:1 where a post appears in several places and needs to work in all of them. 16:9 when the width of the original is the content and cannot be given up.

The four, side by side

Screen occupied and recording kept pull in opposite directions, and that tension is the whole of the decision.

Shape	Screen filled	Width kept from a wide source
9:16	All of a phone	About a third
4:5	Most	Under half
1:1	Around two thirds	About half
16:9	Least	All of it

Recording with the final shape in mind

If you know a recording will become vertical clips, keep the important action in the middle third of a landscape frame. Speakers standing at the far edges, or two guests seated wide apart, are much harder to fit into a tall crop without losing one of them.

Leave headroom but not too much. A vertical crop keeps more of the height than the width, so a face placed very low in the landscape shot ends up with a large empty area above it. Framing the eyes about one third from the top works well for every shape.

Where each shape gets cropped again

Some placements trim your clip further than the ratio suggests. Profile grids often show vertical posts as a shorter preview, and some feeds cover the bottom of a 9:16 clip with buttons, captions and the account name. Keep essential text away from the outer edges and the bottom fifth of the frame.

Link previews in messaging apps and on some websites show a landscape thumbnail even for vertical content. If a clip will be shared widely by link, choose a cover frame where the important part sits in the middle so it survives that crop too.

Using more than one shape for one clip

Producing the same moment in two shapes is common and useful. A 9:16 version for vertical feeds and a 4:5 version for in-feed posts on the same platform often reach slightly different audiences, and the extra shape costs almost nothing once the moment has been chosen.

Keep the words and the opening identical across shapes so your analytics compare like with like. If one shape clearly outperforms the other on a platform after a few weeks, you can drop the weaker one and save the time.

For a series, pick a primary shape and stick to it on each platform. Switching shapes from post to post makes a profile grid look uneven and makes it harder to compare results between clips, because the shape itself changes how a clip is presented and how far into the feed it travels.

Pick the shape on purpose

Start from the destination. Where it is going decides the shape more than what it contains.
Move wider when the footage demands it. Screens, slides and groups all argue for 4:5 or 1:1.
Run twice when one recording serves two places. The same source can produce both shapes.

Run the same footage in two shapes and compare.

Questions people ask

Which shapes are available?: 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 and 16:9, and all four are on every plan.
Which fills a phone screen?: 9:16, because it matches the display. It also keeps the least of a wide recording.
Is 4:5 a compromise or a choice?: A choice, and often the right one. It keeps noticeably more width than 9:16 while still taking most of the screen.
When is square worth it?: When one clip is going to several places and you would rather not produce a version for each.
Does the shape change the price?: It does not. The shape is a choice, not a tier.