A TikTok photo carousel is 1080 x 1920 pixels, 9:16 vertical. Same as a TikTok video, same as an Instagram Reel, same as a YouTube Short.

That is the whole answer to the question most people are asking. The reason it is worth more than one line is that the size is rarely what actually ruins a carousel. The size is easy. What catches people is everything sitting on top of it.

Why you get conflicting answers

Search this question and you will find posts recommending 1:1, 4:5 and 9:16, all confidently.

They are not all wrong. TikTok accepts other ratios. Upload a square image and it will publish, it just will not fill the screen. The app scales it to fit the 9:16 frame and pads the rest, so your slide sits in a band across the middle with dead space above and below it.

So the real distinction is not what TikTok allows, it is what fills the screen. Only 9:16 does.

If you take one thing from this: design at 1080 x 1920 and every slide in the set at the same size. Mixing ratios inside a single carousel is worse than picking the wrong one consistently, because the frame resizes under the reader as they swipe.

The safe zone is the part that actually matters

Here is the thing that no dimensions chart tells you. TikTok draws its own interface on top of your slide, and that interface does not move out of the way for your design.

  • The bottom of the frame carries your username, the caption, and the sound. On a long caption this can eat a serious portion of the lower third.
  • The right edge carries the profile picture, like, comment, bookmark and share buttons, and the spinning sound disc. That column runs a long way up the frame.
  • The top is usually clear, but a small amount is lost on devices with a notch or a dynamic island.

None of that is negotiable, and it is why a slide that looks perfect in a design tool can lose its last line of text on a phone.

The working rule: keep anything that has to be read inside a centred box with roughly 15% clear on every side. On a 1080 x 1920 canvas that is about 160 pixels of margin left and right, and around 290 top and bottom. Backgrounds, colour and imagery can run right to the edge. Words should not.

It is a rule of thumb rather than a published specification, and it is deliberately conservative, because the interface takes up a slightly different amount of room on different phones. Design for the worst case and the slide works everywhere.

How many slides

TikTok allows up to 35 photos in one carousel. That is far more than you want.

The useful range is 6 to 10. Below six there is rarely enough to justify the format over a single image. Above ten, completion falls away, and a carousel nobody finishes is a carousel whose payoff nobody sees.

The structure that works at that length is simple:

  • Slide 1 is the hook. It is doing the job of a thumbnail. If it does not earn the swipe, the other nine slides do not exist.
  • Slides 2 to 8 carry one idea each. One idea. The temptation to fit two onto a slide because you have room is the most common way a good carousel gets dense and stops being swipeable.
  • The last slide gives a reason to act. Save it, follow, or read the next one. Ending on the final tip and stopping wastes the attention you just earned.

Three sizing mistakes worth avoiding

Designing at the wrong ratio and resizing later. Resizing a finished slide moves every text box you carefully placed, and you end up redoing the layout anyway. Start at 1080 x 1920.

Putting the hook at the very top. It survives the crop but competes with the notch, and on a first slide it is the one line that has to land. Bring it down into the safe area.

Exporting at a lower resolution to save time. TikTok compresses uploads. Giving it a smaller file to start with means the compression works on less information, and text edges are the first thing to go soft. Export at full 1080 x 1920.

Posting to more than one platform

If you also post to Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, the good news is that the size is identical. 1080 x 1920 at 9:16 works on all three, so one export covers the set.

The exception is the Instagram feed carousel, which is 4:5 portrait at 1080 x 1350. That is a genuinely different shape, and a 9:16 slide posted there gets cropped top and bottom, which is exactly where hook text usually lives. If you plan to post to both, either keep important text well inside the middle of the frame or export each set at its own size.

For the full cross-platform reference, including Reels, Shorts and Instagram feed dimensions in one table, see TikTok, Reels & Shorts Sizes.

Getting the size right without thinking about it

The reliable fix for all of this is to not set the canvas yourself.

PXT Creator Studio is built at 9:16 only, so every slide starts at 1080 x 1920 and there is no resize step to get wrong. Templates keep text inside the safe area by default, styling carries across slides so slide seven matches slide one, and finished sets publish straight to TikTok from the browser rather than going through an export, transfer and upload cycle.

The free plan covers 50 active posts a month, 50 images and one connected TikTok account, using the system template, with exports at standard quality and a watermark on the ZIP. Pro is $14.99 a month or $119.99 a year.

The short version

  • 1080 x 1920 pixels, 9:16 vertical. Every slide, same size.
  • Keep readable text inside a centred box with about 15% clear all round. The interface takes the rest.
  • 6 to 10 slides. One idea per slide, hook first, a reason to act at the end.
  • Export at full resolution. TikTok's compression does not need help.

Get those four right and the sizing question stops coming up.

Each of the first three has a short reference of its own: what size should a TikTok carousel be, why your slide text is getting cut off, and how many slides a carousel should have.