One export, three platforms

Shorts, Reels and TikTok, side by side.

Drop the vertical video you’re about to post everywhere and see, in one table, how its length, shape, resolution, frame rate, format and size compare with what each platform publishes, and where it doesn’t publish anything at all. Each figure links to the platform’s own page.

Drop the vertical video you’re about to post

Only the file’s headers are read, so a long 4K export takes seconds. Nothing is uploaded.

The app or a scheduling tool

Instagram and TikTok publish two sets of limits: one for posting in the app, and one for their publishing APIs, which is how scheduling tools post for you. They aren’t the same. A Reel can be 20 minutes long in the app but 15 through the API, which also caps the file at 300 MB and the width at 1920 pixels. A TikTok uploaded in the app can be 60 minutes and 30 GB, but through the API it’s 4 GB, and 3 minutes unless TikTok has given the account 5 or 10. Pick the one you use.

Why so much is “not published”

TikTok’s help pages give its lengths and not much else; the upload page in TikTok Studio adds a size limit and its recommendations. Instagram’s Help Centre gives a frame-rate and resolution minimum and some encoding details, but no file size. Blog posts fill the gaps with numbers that contradict each other (TikTok’s “72 MB on Android”, Instagram’s “4 GB”, which is the ads limit). Where the platform doesn’t say, this table says so instead of guessing.

The one that catches people out

Instagram asks for at least 30 frames per second on Reels. A 25 fps export, standard in Europe, or a 24 fps film-look edit falls short of that in the app, though the API accepts anything from 23 to 60.