Airbnb Photo Requirements: Size, Resolution and Specs

Every platform states its photo rules in a different place, and most hosts only find them when an upload gets rejected or a cover photo shows up cropped in search. This page puts the Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com photo requirements side by side, taken from each platform's own help pages as they read on October 14, 2026, with a link to each source so you can check for changes.

It covers file size, resolution, orientation, the cover photo and the room-by-room photo tour. It does not cover how many photos to post; that has its own guide.

Airbnb photo size and resolution

Airbnb's help article on taking great photos of your listing gives one hard number: photos should be at least 1024 x 683 pixels. That is a 3:2 frame, the shape most cameras shoot natively. Airbnb adds that when in doubt, a bigger photo is better.

The same page asks for landscape orientation, and gives the reason: photos in search results are all displayed in landscape, so a vertical photo will not show your space as well. A vertical shot of a tall entry or a narrow bathroom still uploads, but in search it gets cropped to a wide strip and loses most of what you were trying to show.

That is all Airbnb's home-listing help pages state about the file itself. They do not publish a file-size cap or a list of accepted formats for listing photos, so be wary of any guide that quotes exact Airbnb limits beyond the 1024 x 683 minimum. In practice the minimum is low. Any photo from a current phone or camera clears it easily. The real risk is the opposite one: a photo that was shrunk, screenshotted or pulled from an old listing and has lost its detail along the way.

The cover photo and the first five

Airbnb's article on setting up a photo tour says the first five photos are the most important, because they sit prominently at the top of your listing, and the first one is the large image that appears in search. You can reorder those five, and you can set any photo as the cover from the listing editor under Photo tour, then All photos. Changes can take up to 30 minutes to appear.

The spec for the cover is the same as every other photo: landscape, at least 1024 x 683. What matters more is framing. Because search shows the cover in a landscape crop, keep the subject in the middle of the frame with some room on every side, so nothing important is lost at the edges on a small phone screen. Which photo should be the cover is a separate question, covered in our guide to choosing your Airbnb hero image.

Photo tour: every room needs a photo

Airbnb now groups listing photos into a room-by-room photo tour. New photos are sorted into rooms automatically, and you can move a photo to a different room or rearrange the rooms yourself. The one hard rule in the help article: every room or space needs at least one photo to appear in the tour. If a room has no photo, you either add one or temporarily remove that room from the tour.

This is where a thin photo set causes trouble. If the listing says three bedrooms and two bathrooms, the tour expects a photo of each, plus the kitchen, living area and any outdoor space you list. A guest who opens the second bathroom and finds nothing assumes the worst. When we shoot a rental, every room gets covered, so the tour has a photo for each one. Pool, hot tub and other amenity shots are an add-on you pick at booking. Full coverage is easier when the photographer is not counting frames: every Airbnb photography package includes unlimited photos.

Vrbo photo requirements

Vrbo publishes the most detailed rules of the three, in its photo guidelines:

• Formats: JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF or SVG.
• Minimum resolution: 1024 x 683 pixels, the same floor as Airbnb.
• Ideal resolution: 3840 x 2160 pixels or higher.
• Orientation: horizontal displays best. Vertical is accepted.
• Photo count: at least 6 unique photos published at all times. Dropping below 6 for more than 30 days can bring an indefinite suspension penalty, and duplicates are removed and not counted.
• Rejected: watermarks with logos or borders, text overlays such as URLs or contact details, collages, black-and-white or sepia photos, blank photos, close-ups, and non-photos such as documents or posters. Floor plans and property maps are allowed; area maps are not.

Vrbo also warns against phone Portrait Mode, which blurs parts of the frame. The watermark rule catches hosts who reuse photos from a previous photographer with a logo in the corner, and the text rule catches the "Book direct at..." overlays some hosts add. Both get rejected.

Booking.com photo requirements

Booking.com sets a much higher bar on resolution. Its partner help page on photo requirements for your property says:

• Resolution: at least 2048 x 1080 pixels, preferably 4000 x 3000.
• Orientation: landscape only.
• Photo count: at least 10 photos, with at least four of each room or unit and at least one of the bathroom and toilet.
• Avoid: filters, strong contrast, over-saturation or excessive HDR, collages, watermarks, black-and-white photos, and extreme wide-angle or fisheye shots. Images that mainly show contact details are not allowed, and neither are images showing personal information such as IDs or bills.
• 360-degree photos: a 2:1 aspect ratio and at least 1280 x 900 pixels.

The 2048-pixel minimum is the one that catches hosts out. A photo set exported small for Airbnb years ago may clear Airbnb and Vrbo and still fail here. The line about excessive HDR is worth noting too. Bright Arizona windows next to a dim interior are exactly where heavy-handed HDR goes wrong, with grey walls and glowing halos. Our editors blend exposures by hand so the view holds and the room still looks like a room.

One set of files for all three

You do not need three different exports. Read together, the three help pages point to one approach: shoot every frame in landscape, keep each file at full size, skip logos and text, and keep plenty of room around the subject.

Every Booked Visual delivery includes the full-size originals plus a Web-Optimized (Airbnb + Vrbo) folder of the same photos at 3840 pixels wide. That width meets the ideal Vrbo states and is far above Airbnb's minimum, while keeping files light enough to upload quickly from a phone. Booking.com prefers 4000 x 3000, so upload the full-size originals there. Every photo is edited by our in-house team and delivered within 24 hours of the shoot, in a Google Drive gallery you keep.

If you host in the Valley, our Phoenix Airbnb photography page covers areas and timing. Packages start at $249 for a one-bedroom, and you can book a shoot online in about a minute.

Photo requirements FAQ

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