Quick answer: Snapchat is a full-vertical platform — 1080×1920 pixels (9:16) for Snaps, Stories, Spotlight, and ads. The one exception is a geofilter, which is 1080×2340 transparent PNG under 300 KB. The real challenge is not the canvas, it is the safe zone.

Why everything is 9:16

Snapchat invented the vertical story format and never expanded into landscape feeds. The phone screen is the canvas, and the camera fills all of it. Uploading anything other than 9:16 means letterboxing, blurred padding, or a center crop — and on a network that is visually dense by default, a letterboxed Snap reads as an ad from a brand that did not bother.

The size table

Asset Dimensions Ratio Format / limit
Snap / Story image 1080×1920 9:16 JPG or PNG, ~5 MB
Spotlight 1080×1920 9:16 Vertical full-screen
Vertical video ad 1080×1920 9:16 Full-screen canvas
Geofilter / filter 1080×2340 9:19.5 Transparent PNG, ≤300 KB
Profile image 320×320 1:1 Circular crop
Safe zone (organic) Keep out of top/bottom ~150 px — —
Safe zone (ads) Bottom ~330 px reserved — CTA zone

The safe zone

Snapchat's own UI sits on top of your image and never moves. At the top are the name bar, story progress, and the time left; at the bottom are the reply field, the send arrow, and the swipe-up or CTA area. On organic posts, keep faces and text out of roughly the top and bottom 150 pixels. On ads, the bottom 330 pixels belong to the call-to-action and render buttons, so the message must live in the central 60% of the frame.

The Story safe zone guide compares the overlays across Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat — they are close but not identical, and centering text on one network does not guarantee it is clear on another.

Geofilters

Geofilters are the one asset with a different canvas. They are 1080×2340, which is taller than the screen so the filter can scale across devices, and the file must be a transparent PNG under 300 KB. The center 1080×1920 region is the visible canvas; the extra height is padding. Snapchat also requires that the artwork cover no more than roughly 25% of the screen — the point is an overlay, not a billboard — and transparent areas are mandatory so the user's camera view shows through.

Two things usually reject a filter: text too close to the platform's own UI, and a file that looks like a full-screen ad.

Spotlight

Spotlight is the algorithmic feed, and the same 1080×1920 canvas applies. It differs in tone: the feed is loud, fast, and tightly edited, so a single title card rarely performs; a hook within the first second and burned-in captions do.

Building vertical sets once

Most launches need the same 9:16 story across Snapchat, Instagram Stories, and TikTok, with the network-specific safe zones and logos adjusted. Since the overlays differ by a few hundred pixels, a single flat file with text pinned to the edges will look wrong on one of the three. If you are producing the whole set, a tool such as Neatico exports the vertical variants with the correct safe zones from one prompt instead of nudging type around three canvases.

Frequently asked questions

What size is a Snapchat story? 1080×1920 pixels, 9:16, JPG or PNG. Snaps and Stories use the same canvas; Spotlight uses it too.

What size is a Snapchat geofilter? 1080×2340 pixels as a transparent PNG, 300 KB or smaller, with the visible content kept in the central 1080×1920 region and covering under about 25% of the screen.

How big is the safe zone? Keep out of roughly 150 pixels at the top and bottom on organic Snaps; reserve the bottom 330 pixels for the CTA in ads.

Can I repost an Instagram Story on Snapchat? The canvas is the same, but check the UI overlays and remove Instagram-specific elements. The cross-platform sizes hub has the comparison.