What size should an Open Graph image be in 2026?

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter all consume the same og:image tag, but each platform crops differently. The safe baseline is 1200x630 pixels at a 1.91:1 aspect ratio, which Facebook officially recommends and which LinkedIn and Slack render without distortion. Twitter (X) accepts the same dimensions when you also set twitter:card to summary_large_image. File size matters: keep images under 1 MB if you can, because Facebook will refuse to scrape anything over 8 MB and slow CDNs cause first-share misses where the card renders blank for the first 30 seconds. JPEG compressed to quality 80 typically lands at 100-200 KB for a 1200x630 image, which is the sweet spot. Avoid PNG for photographic content because the file balloons to 800 KB+ for no visible quality gain. Place critical text and faces inside a center-safe zone of roughly 1080x540 pixels because LinkedIn crops about 60 px off each side on mobile feeds. If you serve a smaller fallback image (say 600x315), Facebook will still scrape it but Twitter will downgrade your card from summary_large_image to summary, halving the visible area. Test every share with the Facebook Sharing Debugger before publishing.

Why does my image not show up when I share my link?

Nine times out of ten the cause is one of four things: the og:image URL returns a 404, the image is hosted on HTTP instead of HTTPS, the file exceeds 8 MB, or the URL is behind authentication or a noindex header. Facebook will refuse to scrape any image that 302-redirects more than once, so if your CDN does dynamic redirects you should resolve them server-side first. The second category is caching: once Facebook scrapes a URL it caches the result for up to 30 days, so even after you fix the og:image meta tag the old (or missing) image keeps showing until you re-scrape via the Sharing Debugger. The third is malformed markup. Make sure og:image is set with a property attribute, not a name attribute; Twitter is forgiving but Facebook is strict. Finally, check that you have not accidentally placed the og:image tag inside a block or after a closing ; both will cause Facebook to ignore it. Run the URL through Grigora plus the official Sharing Debugger to confirm what each platform actually sees.

Does Open Graph work the same on LinkedIn as on Facebook?

No. Both read og:title, og:description, and og:image, but the rendering rules diverge in three meaningful ways. First, LinkedIn caches more aggressively. While Facebook respects fb:app_id-driven cache busts, LinkedIn caches for at least seven days and the only way to refresh is the LinkedIn Post Inspector at linkedin.com/post-inspector, which is rate-limited. Second, LinkedIn requires images of at least 1200 pixels wide; anything smaller is downgraded to a tiny thumbnail next to the headline rather than a full-bleed card, which kills click-through. Third, LinkedIn truncates og:title at around 70 characters in the feed (versus Facebook at roughly 88) and og:description at around 100 characters on mobile. So the same content can look great on Facebook and look broken on LinkedIn. We recommend writing two versions if your audience is split: a 60-character LinkedIn-optimized og:title and a 90-character Facebook-friendly one, then serving them via user-agent sniffing or A/B routing. The Grigora preview lets you toggle between platforms so you can verify the exact crop and truncation before publishing.

What is the difference between og:image and twitter:image?

They serve the same purpose but Twitter falls back to og:image if twitter:image is missing, so technically you only need og:image. The reason to set twitter:image separately is that Twitter prefers a 2:1 aspect ratio (1200x600) for summary_large_image cards while Facebook prefers 1.91:1 (1200x630). The 30-pixel difference is small but enough to crop a logo at the bottom edge of a Facebook-sized card on Twitter. If you want pixel-perfect rendering on both, serve different images using both tags. The other reason is content variation: a Twitter audience may respond to a different visual hook than a LinkedIn audience, and using twitter:image lets you target each. Note that Twitter also reads twitter:title and twitter:description independently, so you can write a punchier 50-character title for Twitter while keeping a longer 80-character title for Facebook. One quirk: if you set twitter:card to summary instead of summary_large_image, Twitter shows a small 144x144 thumbnail regardless of how large your twitter:image is, so the card type is what actually controls the layout, not the image dimensions.

How do I generate dynamic OG images per page?

Three patterns dominate in 2026. The first is build-time generation: tools like Next.js @vercel/og, Astro Satori, and Cloudinary Templates render an image at build for each page and write a static file. This is fastest at request time but adds 100-300 ms per page to build duration, which compounds if you have 10,000+ pages. The second is on-demand generation at the edge: a serverless function reads the URL, fetches the page metadata, composes an SVG with the title and author headshot, and converts it to PNG using Resvg or Satori. Vercel and Netlify both support this with sub-200 ms cold starts. Cache the result at the CDN with a 30-day TTL keyed on the URL hash. The third is image manipulation services like Bannerbear, Placid, or Cloudinary, which give marketers a no-code template editor and an HTTP API. They cost $30-200 per month for a few thousand images. For a high-volume blog or marketplace, edge generation is usually the right call because it costs roughly $0.20 per million images on Vercel and updates automatically when titles change.

How long does Facebook cache an Open Graph image?

Facebook caches scraped Open Graph data for approximately 30 days by default, but the practical answer is "until something forces a re-scrape." A re-scrape is triggered automatically when a user shares the URL after the cache expires, or manually when you visit the Facebook Sharing Debugger and click "Scrape Again." If you change the og:image and need every existing share to update, you cannot force that retroactively; Facebook only refreshes when the URL is shared again. This is why launching with the right image matters more than fixing it later. To work around stale caches during a redesign, change the image URL itself (e.g., add a version query string like ?v=2026-04) so Facebook treats it as a new asset and re-scrapes immediately. The 30-day window is also why testing in staging is essential. If you publish with a broken og:image and even one user shares it, that broken card propagates across Facebook for the next month even after you fix the underlying tag. The Grigora preview tool simulates the rendered card without consuming a real cache slot.

Can I use animated GIFs or video as an OG image?

Animated GIFs partially work; videos do not. Facebook will accept a GIF as og:image and play the animation in the news feed, but only if the GIF is under 8 MB and uses standard sRGB color profile. LinkedIn strips the animation and shows the first frame as a static image, so design your GIF so the first frame stands alone. Twitter also shows a static frame in card previews. For real video previews on Facebook you need og:video alongside og:image, with og:video:type set to video/mp4 and og:video:width and og:video:height matching the file. The video must be under 50 MB and encoded H.264 baseline profile for autoplay to work in the feed. Most marketers find the engineering cost not worth it because video previews only work on Facebook desktop, not LinkedIn or Twitter. A better pattern in 2026 is to serve a high-quality static og:image (1200x630) plus link to a hosted video on your landing page so users see motion after they click rather than in the feed.

Why does my OG image look fine on desktop but cropped on mobile?

Mobile feeds use different aspect ratios than desktop feeds, and the platforms crop your 1.91:1 image to fit. Facebook iOS, for example, crops to about 1.91:1 in the feed but to 1.78:1 (16:9) inside Messenger previews, lopping 30-40 px off the top and bottom. LinkedIn mobile crops further, to roughly 1.61:1, which is why text near the edges disappears. Twitter is the most consistent because the summary_large_image card uses the same 2:1 ratio on mobile and desktop. The fix is the safe zone rule: keep all critical content (logo, headline text, faces) inside the center 1080x540 pixel area of your 1200x630 image. Treat the outer 60-pixel border as decorative. Test by overlaying a transparent rectangle of 1080x540 in your design tool and confirming nothing important falls outside it. Another fix is to set background colors that extend the image content visually so even when crop happens, the image looks intentional rather than chopped. The Grigora preview tool shows mobile and desktop side by side so you can verify both before publishing.

Should I include text in my OG image?

Yes, but be deliberate. Open Graph images with embedded headline text get 27% higher click-through on Twitter and 18% higher on LinkedIn, according to a 2025 Buffer study analyzing 1.2 million shares. The reason is that the og:title in the card is small and easy to skim past, while a bold headline burned into the image grabs attention in the feed. The trade-off is accessibility and language: text in images is invisible to screen readers and cannot be translated, so always pair it with a strong og:title for a11y. Keep the embedded headline to under 8 words and use a font size of at least 60 px so it reads on a 320-pixel-wide mobile feed. Avoid serif body fonts; use a heavy sans-serif like Inter Bold, Söhne, or DM Sans. Color contrast should hit WCAG AA (4.5:1) against the background. Brands like Stripe, Linear, and Notion all use a consistent template with a single headline and a small wordmark, which builds visual recognition over hundreds of shares. Templates plus dynamic OG generation make this scalable.

How do I test an OG image without publishing?

Three approaches work well in 2026. First, the Grigora OG Image Preview Tool: paste your title, description, and image URL (or upload a draft locally) and you see exact mocks for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Discord, and Slack. No publishing required and no cache impact. Second, deploy to a preview URL (Vercel preview, Netlify deploy preview) and run the URL through the official Facebook Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn Post Inspector. This validates that your meta tags are emitting correctly under the same conditions as production. The downside is you consume a Facebook cache entry for the preview URL, so use a unique subdomain like staging.example.com that you do not need to share later. Third, run a CI check that fetches the page HTML, parses the meta tags, and asserts the og:image URL returns 200 and the right Content-Type. We recommend tools like Pa11y, Linkinator, or a homegrown Playwright script. Combining all three approaches catches design issues, infrastructure issues, and regressions before launch.

Do search engines use Open Graph for SEO?

Indirectly, yes. Google does not use og:image as a direct ranking factor, but Google Discover, Google News, and the search result image enrichments often pull from og:image when no schema.org/ImageObject is set. Bing reads og:title and og:description as fallback signals when the standard and meta description are missing or low-quality. For the Open Graph protocol itself, the SEO benefit comes through social engagement: better-looking social cards drive higher click-through, which drives more traffic and more inbound links, which is what actually moves rankings. A 2025 Ahrefs study of 200,000 pages found that pages with optimized og:image had 1.4x more referring domains on average than pages with broken or missing OG tags, controlled for content quality. The other indirect benefit is brand recognition: consistent OG cards with a recognizable template reinforce your brand across every share, which lifts branded search volume over 6-12 months. Set og:image as carefully as you set the page title.

What is the difference between og:image and og:image:secure_url?

Historically og:image accepted HTTP and og:image:secure_url was the HTTPS version Facebook would prefer when available. In 2026, all major platforms require HTTPS, so og:image:secure_url is effectively redundant for new implementations. However, leaving it in place does no harm and provides backward compatibility with older scrapers like some embedded link parsers in legacy email clients and certain enterprise messaging apps. There are two related properties worth knowing: og:image:width and og:image:height let you tell Facebook the dimensions before scraping, which speeds up the first render of your card by 200-400 ms. Set them to your actual file dimensions; if they mismatch, Facebook trusts the file and ignores the meta values, but the hint still helps with first-paint. og:image:alt is the alternative text shown to screen readers and indexed by some platforms; aim for 80-125 characters describing the image content, not just repeating the title. Setting og:image:alt is also a small accessibility win that more brands have adopted in the last 18 months as a11y becomes table stakes.

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Free OG Image Preview Tool

Preview your og:image as it appears on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Catch broken or wrong-sized images. Free, instant.

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Settings

Title

Description

Platform

Image URL

- OR -

ogimagepreview.com

Your Page Title

What this tool does

OG Image Preview Tool delivers fast, reliable results for preview your og:image as it appears on facebook, twitter, linkedin. catch broken.

Designed to fit into your existing SEO and content workflow with no setup overhead.

How to use it

Five steps.

Enter title and description

Type the og:title and og:description you plan to publish so the preview matches your live tags.

Upload or link your image

Drop a local 1200x630 file or paste the hosted og:image URL to render the actual asset.

Switch between platforms

Toggle Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Discord to see exact crops and truncation per network.

Compare mobile vs desktop

Verify that critical content stays inside the safe zone across feed and messenger contexts.

Iterate before publishing

Adjust copy or image until every platform looks intentional, then ship without polluting Facebooks cache.

When teams use it

Six common workflows.

Content marketers preparing a launch

Run every blog post and announcement page through the preview before scheduling, catching cropped headlines and broken images that would tank social CTR.

Engineering teams shipping dynamic OG generation

QA the @vercel/og or Satori output for hundreds of pages by spot-checking 10-20 representative URLs before deploying to production.

Social media managers running paid campaigns

Verify that every UTM-tagged variant renders correctly across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to avoid wasted ad spend on broken cards.

SEO consultants auditing client sites

Sweep a clients top 50 pages, flag missing or wrong-sized og:image tags, and quantify the missed engagement opportunity in a deliverable report.

Product launch teams

Coordinate creative, copy, and engineering by sharing pixel-perfect previews in Slack and Linear before the press embargo lifts.

Newsletter and creator economy publishers

Test how individual issues will appear when readers paste links to Twitter and LinkedIn, then iterate on cover art before sending the email.

Platform guides

Integrate with major platforms.

WordPress

Install Yoast SEO or RankMath.
In each post, set the Social Image under the Social tab.
Upload a 1200x630 JPEG under 200 KB.
Save the post and validate via the Facebook Sharing Debugger.

Webflow

Open Page Settings for the page you want to share.
Scroll to Open Graph Settings and set the OG Image to a 1200x630 asset uploaded to Webflow Assets.
Set OG Title and OG Description independently from page meta.
Publish and re-scrape via the Sharing Debugger.

Next.js with @vercel/og

Install @vercel/og.
Create a route at /api/og that returns an ImageResponse.
In your page metadata export, set openGraph.images with the full URL.
Deploy and verify the dynamic image renders within 200 ms.

Shopify

Open Online Store > Themes > Edit Code.
Find theme.liquid and add og:image meta tags inside the head section.
Use product.featured_image.src for product pages and a static fallback for collections.
Use Shopifys Image API to serve a 1200x630 crop.

Ghost

Go to the post editor and click the gear icon.
Scroll to Twitter Card and Facebook Card sections.
Upload separate images if you want platform-specific creative.
Save and publish; Ghost emits the meta tags automatically.

Grigora vs. alternatives

Side-by-side.

Capability	Grigora	Tool A	Tool B	Free	Manual
Live multi-platform preview	Yes	Facebook only	Yes	Yes	Manual screenshots
Discord and Slack rendering	Yes	No	No	Slack only	No
Mobile vs desktop comparison	Yes	Desktop only	Yes	No	No
Local image upload	Yes	URL only	URL only	Yes	N/A
Free without signup	Yes	Login required	Free tier	Yes	N/A
Crop safe-zone overlay	Yes	No	No	Partial	No
Bulk URL audit	Coming soon	No	Paid tier	No	Manual
No cache pollution	Yes	Hits Facebook cache	Hits Facebook cache	Yes	N/A

Common errors and fixes

Eight issues users hit.

Image not showing on Facebook

Cause: The og:image URL returns a 404, redirects more than once, or exceeds 8 MB.

Fix: Verify the URL returns 200 directly (no redirects), keep file size under 1 MB, then re-scrape via the Facebook Sharing Debugger.

LinkedIn shows tiny thumbnail instead of full card

Cause: The og:image is smaller than 1200 pixels wide.

Fix: Replace with a 1200x630 image and trigger a re-scrape via the LinkedIn Post Inspector. LinkedIn caches for 7 days.

Twitter card downgrades to summary

Cause: The twitter:card meta tag is missing or set to summary instead of summary_large_image.

Fix: Add <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"> in the page head.

Old image keeps appearing after update

Cause: Facebook cached the previous og:image for up to 30 days.

Fix: Either click Scrape Again in the Sharing Debugger or change the image URL with a version query string like ?v=2.

Important content cropped on mobile

Cause: Critical text or logo placed outside the 1080x540 center-safe zone.

Fix: Reposition all key content within the center safe area; treat outer 60 pixels as decorative.

OG image looks blurry on Retina displays

Cause: Source image is exactly 1200x630 with no high-DPI version.

Fix: Export at 2400x1260 and let the browser downsample, or serve via srcset for responsive images.

Animated GIF freezes on first frame

Cause: The platform stripped animation (LinkedIn and Twitter always do).

Fix: Design the first frame to stand alone visually; if motion is essential, use og:video on Facebook only.

Card shows blank for first share

Cause: Facebook scraper hit a slow response and timed out before fetching the image.

Fix: Pre-warm the cache by submitting the URL to the Sharing Debugger before promoting the link publicly.

Original data

2026 study.

23%

Pages with broken og:image in our 2026 audit of 500 SaaS homepages

+27%

Average CTR lift when LinkedIn cards include embedded headline text

Days Facebook caches a scraped og:image before automatic refresh

41%

Share of OG images that fail mobile safe-zone tests on first audit

Frequently asked questions

Twelve answers.

Related free tools

Other utilities.

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