How Long Can Instagram Videos Be? The Complete Guide

How long can a video be on Instagram? This is a common question among users of the site. Instagram is a popular social media platform for sharing photos, but it also allows users to share videos. If you are a regular Instagram user, you've no doubt seen these videos playing as you scroll through your feed.

You may have also noticed that most of the videos are relatively short. If you want to create your videos for the platform, you need to know what limitations are placed on their length. So, how long are Instagram videos? This post will help answer that question for you.

How long can Instagram videos be?

The answer to this question isn't straightforward because there are several different formats available for posting videos. Each of these different options will have separate limitations on length. Let's break down each of the ways you can post a video on Instagram and the limits placed on video length for that option. Options are presented for shortest allowed video length to longest.

Stories

Stories are a special form of Instagram post that disappears after 24 hours. The purpose of the Instagram story is to share small segments of your day with your followers. This format is not meant for content that will stick around or that's going to contain very detailed thoughts on anything. Because of the quick shot nature of the format, Instagram story video length is limited to only 15 seconds. However, if you record for over 15 seconds, your story will be split into multiple segments, all of which can be uploaded at once. It's a good idea to consider other site areas to post to if your video runs much longer than a few segments.

Regular Post Videos

Regular Instagram posts appear in your followers' feeds and stay up forever, or at least until you manually delete them. Their more permanent nature allows for a longer video length than that allowed for by stories. However, Instagram is primarily meant for photos, so this still isn't the best place for longer-form videos. Because of that, the Instagram video length for a regular post is 60 seconds.

Instagram TV

If you are wondering how to post a long video on Instagram, then their long-form video option, Instagram TV, may be an option for you. Regular users of the site can post videos between 15 seconds and 10 minutes in this section. If you are a verified user or have a lot of followers, it's possible to have that limit increased to a full hour.

Livestreams

Livestreams are, of course, streamed live. This limits the amount of post-production that can go into creating them and requires them to be recorded all in one go. If this limitation doesn't bother you, then the Livestream option allows even regular users to post videos up to 60 minutes in length. You can extend that by recording back-to-back live streams. Because the streams are recorded by default, your followers will be able to watch them back at any time.

Conclusion

So, how long can videos be on Instagram? The answer could be as little as 15 seconds or as high as an hour. But now, you are armed with the knowledge of which types of posts allow which video lengths. This should make it a little easier to find an appropriate place to place most of your videos, regardless of their length. This excludes videos over an hour-long, of course. But for videos that long, Instagram probably isn't the best platform. Now all that's left is to fire up your favorite video editor and get to work creating.