# What Are Facebook Reels? Specs and Guide for 2026 **Source:** https://posteverywhere.ai/social-media-terms/facebook-reels --- # What are Facebook Reels? Facebook Reels are short vertical videos that appear in the Reels tab and in Feed, shown to people whether or not they follow the Page that posted them. That last part is the whole point: Reels are a discovery surface, which is what separates them from almost everything else you can post to a Facebook Page. The more useful 2026 answer, though, is that Reels are no longer a format you choose. In June 2025 Meta announced that [all videos on Facebook would be shared as Reels](https://about.fb.com/news/2025/06/making-it-easier-create-videos-facebook/), removing the choice between uploading a video and uploading a Reel, and renaming the Video tab to the Reels tab. If you post video to Facebook now, you are posting a Reel. ## The specs, and the contradiction most guides miss There are two different sets of limits for Facebook Reels, and confusing them is the most common factual error in articles on this subject. What the Facebook app allows and what the Graph API allows are not the same thing. ### In the app Meta states plainly that Reels on Facebook have no length or format restrictions. That is why longer Reels and horizontal Reels now appear natively, which would have been impossible under the old rules. ### Through the API Meta’s [Reels Publishing documentation](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/video-api/guides/reels-publishing/) still specifies much tighter limits, and these are what bind any scheduling tool: - **Duration:** 3 to 90 seconds - **Aspect ratio:** 9:16 - **Resolution:** 1080 × 1920 recommended, 540 × 960 minimum - **Frame rate:** 24 to 60 fps - **Format:** .mp4 recommended So a two minute horizontal Reel is perfectly possible if you upload it by hand in the app, and not possible through any third party tool. If you plan your content around a scheduler, plan for 90 seconds and vertical. Notably, Meta does not publish a maximum file size for Reels in either the Reels or video publishing documentation, despite the specific numbers you will find quoted elsewhere. Used by 2,831 happy customers ## Schedule Facebook Reels alongside every other platform PostEverywhere publishes Reels through Meta's official Graph API, so the specs above are handled for you. Plan a week of vertical video once and let it publish across 11 platforms. [Start free trial](https://app.posteverywhere.ai/signup)[Connect your AI agent](https://posteverywhere.ai/agents)[View pricing](https://posteverywhere.ai/pricing)7-day free trial · Cancel anytime ## How Reels differ from Stories and from Instagram Reels **Against Facebook Stories:** Stories disappear after 24 hours and are shown to people who already follow you. Reels are permanent and are shown to people who do not. One retains an audience, the other grows one, and they are not interchangeable no matter how similar the vertical format looks. **Against Instagram Reels:** separate apps, separate ranking, separate monetisation eligibility. They share the 9:16 shape and can be cross-posted, but a Facebook Reel publishes to a Facebook Page through an entirely different API endpoint. Treating them as one format is the mistake that leads to watermarked reposts, covered below. If you publish to both, our guide to [cross-posting](https://posteverywhere.ai/cross-posting) explains how to do it without the penalties. ## Scheduling Reels through the API Scheduling is supported, which surprises people who assume Reels must be posted live. Meta’s [Page Video Reels reference](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/page/video_reels/) accepts a `video_state` of `DRAFT`, `PUBLISHED` or `SCHEDULED`. Two limits are worth knowing before you build a content calendar around it: - A scheduled publish time must be **more than 10 minutes ahead and within 29 days**. You cannot queue a Reel for next quarter. - The Reels API is limited to **30 published posts in a rolling 24 hour period**. It is a moving window rather than a daily reset, so a large burst delays whatever comes next. For most Pages neither limit ever binds. They matter if you manage many accounts, in which case a [content calendar](https://posteverywhere.ai/social-media-calendar) that spreads publishing across days is worth more than raw volume. ## What Facebook actually rewards Meta has become unusually explicit about this. In March 2026 it published [guidance on rewarding original creators](https://about.fb.com/news/2026/03/rewarding-original-creators-on-facebook/) listing what gets deprioritised: content that duplicates or minimally edits another creator’s post, re-uploading posts the Page had no role in creating, and low value changes such as adding borders, inserting captions, or changing playback speed. Reaction videos and narration over someone else’s footage count too, when nothing meaningful is added. The consequence is not subtle. Accounts can be deemed non-recommendable and demonetised, and Meta says reduced distribution applies across all of an account’s posts rather than only the offending one. In the same post Meta reported that views and time spent watching original Reels on Facebook approximately doubled in the second half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. Whatever weight you give a platform reporting on its own priorities, the direction of travel is clear enough to plan around. ## The watermark problem Meta’s [guidance on unoriginal content](https://creators.facebook.com/blog/combating-unoriginal-content) tells creators to avoid visible third party watermarks and content that is visibly recycled from other apps. In practice that rules out the most common workflow in short form video: exporting from TikTok with the watermark baked in and reposting. The fix is to export a clean master from your editor and publish that to each platform separately, rather than downloading your own post back off one app and feeding it to another. Same video, no watermark, no penalty. ## Captions, hashtags and length Meta’s published guidance is refreshingly specific: captions with no links, minimal use of capital letters, and **no more than five hashtags** perform best. That is far fewer than the twenty or thirty routinely recommended for Instagram, and it is worth following precisely because it comes from the platform rather than from a blog. One piece of received wisdom worth resisting: the idea that switching to video will transform your Facebook engagement. [Buffer’s 2026 analysis](https://buffer.com/resources/state-of-social-media-engagement-2026/) of roughly 161,000 profiles found median Facebook engagement remarkably flat across formats: images 5.20%, video 4.84%, text 4.76%, links 4.43%. Buffer notes that on Facebook specifically, format choice matters less than almost anywhere else in their dataset. Post Reels because they reach non-followers, not because video is inherently better rewarded here. ## Monetisation in 2026 Meta consolidated its separate creator schemes into a single programme, **Facebook Content Monetization**, which pays on the performance of short and long form video, Stories, and photo and text posts rather than treating each format differently. In March 2026 it added [Creator Fast Track](https://about.fb.com/news/2026/03/creator-fast-track-grow-your-audience-earn-money-on-facebook/), which pays creators with at least 100,000 followers on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube $1,000 a month, or $3,000 a month for more than a million followers, guaranteed for three months of posting eligible Reels to Facebook. It is a straightforward attempt to buy established audiences away from competing platforms, and it tells you how much Facebook Reels distribution is worth to Meta right now. Eligibility thresholds for the main programme change often and are not consistently documented, so check your Professional Dashboard rather than trusting a figure quoted in an article, including this one. ## Frequently asked questions ### Are Facebook Reels and Facebook videos still different things? Largely no. Meta announced in June 2025 that all videos uploaded to Facebook are shared as Reels, and renamed the Video tab to the Reels tab. You no longer choose between posting a video and posting a Reel. Older videos uploaded before the change were left as they were. ### How long can a Facebook Reel be? It depends on how you publish. In the Facebook app Meta removed length and format restrictions in 2025, which is why longer and horizontal Reels now exist. But Reels published through the Graph API are documented at 3 to 90 seconds and 9:16, so any scheduling tool is still bound by the shorter cap. ### Can Facebook Reels be scheduled in advance? Yes. The Graph API accepts a video_state of SCHEDULED along with a scheduled_publish_time. Meta documents that the publish time must be more than 10 minutes from now and within 29 days, so you cannot schedule a Reel a month or more ahead. ### How many Facebook Reels can you publish through the API in a day? Meta limits the Reels API to 30 published posts within a rolling 24 hour period. That is per Page, and it is a moving window rather than a daily reset, so a large burst will delay later posts. ### Do Facebook Reels reach people who do not follow my Page? Yes, and this is the main structural difference from Stories. Reels surface in the Reels tab and in Feed regardless of whether the viewer follows you, which makes them a discovery surface. Stories are shown to your existing followers, so they retain an audience rather than growing one. ### Will a TikTok watermark hurt a Facebook Reel? Yes. Meta explicitly tells creators to avoid visible third party watermarks and content that is visibly recycled from other apps. Accounts that repeatedly post unoriginal content can be made non-recommendable and lose monetisation access, and Meta says reduced distribution applies across all of that account’s posts rather than only the offending one. ### What is the Facebook monetisation programme called now? Facebook Content Monetization. Meta consolidated its separate schemes into one programme that pays on the performance of short and long form video, Stories, and photo and text posts. In March 2026 Meta also launched Creator Fast Track, which pays established creators from other platforms a guaranteed monthly amount for three months for posting Reels to Facebook. ### How many hashtags should you use on a Facebook Reel? Five at most. Meta’s own guidance is that captions with no links, minimal use of capital letters, and no more than five hashtags perform best. That is considerably fewer than the twenty or thirty often recommended for other platforms. ## Related reading - [Facebook scheduler](https://posteverywhere.ai/facebook-scheduler) - [Facebook aspect ratios and image sizes](https://posteverywhere.ai/blog/facebook-aspect-ratios) - [How the Facebook algorithm works](https://posteverywhere.ai/blog/how-the-facebook-algorithm-works) - [Cross-posting to every platform](https://posteverywhere.ai/cross-posting) - [Best time to post on social media](https://posteverywhere.ai/best-time-to-post)