Featured Image vs Cover Image vs OG Image
What each one means, where it actually shows up, and whether you need all three.
The three terms describe the same kind of asset - a representative image for a post - but they are not synonyms, and treating them as one is how covers get cropped, link previews come up blank, and people make three files when one would do. A featured image is the post’s image inside your site, an OG image is that image inside a link preview, and a cover image (in WordPress) is a picture you place in the article body. That is the whole answer. The rest is where each one shows up and why the names blur.
They blur because in practice one file often plays two of the roles at once. Your featured image gets reused as your OG image without you lifting a finger. So you hear the words swapped around and assume they mean the same thing. They don’t, and the difference decides whether you need one image or two.
Featured image: the post’s face on your own site
The featured image is the one picture that stands in for the whole post. You set it once, in a single dedicated slot,
and your theme decides where it appears: the top of the article, the tile in your blog index, the thumbnail in a
“related posts” strip. In WordPress this slot is officially called the featured image, though the underlying the_post_thumbnail() function means a lot of themes and tutorials still call it the thumbnail. Same thing.
The defining trait: there is exactly one per post. It represents the post rather than living inside it. If you have ever wondered why an image you added to the body never showed up on the homepage tile, this is why - the tile pulls from the featured slot, and nothing else.
OG image: the same picture, inside a link preview
The OG image is what renders when someone pastes your link into Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, or a group chat. ”
OG” is short for Open Graph, the metadata protocol Facebook published back in 2010 that nearly every platform now reads.
You set it with a single line in the page’s <head>:
<meta property="og:image" content="https://yoursite.com/cover.webp"/>Here is the part most people miss: on a normal blog, you are not picking a different image here. Your CMS (or your SEO
plugin) takes the featured image you already chose and writes it into that og:image tag for you. The featured image and the OG image are
the same file wearing two hats - one for your site, one for the rest of the internet.
The reason it gets its own name is that the link card plays by its own rules - a target size, a practical floor, and the one extra tag X wants before it shows the big card. The short version: size that file to 1200×630, keep the subject centered, and it renders cleanly everywhere. The full tag set, the per-platform crops, and why the magic numbers are 1200 and 630 are all in Open Graph image size.
Cover image: a different thing entirely (blame WordPress)
WordPress is where the confusion is actually earned. In its block editor there is a Cover block, and a cover image is the picture you put inside it. It is body content. You drop it between paragraphs to break up a long article, and unlike the featured image, it can carry a text overlay and a color tint right out of the box. The featured image lives in its own panel instead; here is how to set a featured image in WordPress.
So the two WordPress concepts split cleanly:
| Term | Where it lives | How many per post | Carries overlay text |
|---|---|---|---|
| Featured image | The post’s dedicated slot - feeds, archives, link previews | Exactly one | No (not without a plugin) |
| OG image | The og:image tag in <head>, read by social platforms | One per page | Whatever you baked in |
| Cover image (WP) | Inside the article body, as a Cover block | As many as you want | Yes, built in |
Outside WordPress, “cover image” usually just means the big banner image at the top of a post, which is functionally the featured image. So the same two words point at two different things depending on the tool. When someone says “cover image,” the only honest move is to ask: the one slot that represents the post, or a block inside the article? For the design side of getting that banner right, I wrote a whole piece on what makes a good blog featured image. A strong banner is also the one that helps the post win clicks and rank, so it is worth the effort.
The misconception: that these are three files you make
The instinct, once you learn there are three terms, is to make three images. Almost nobody needs to.
For a standard blog post, one file does both the featured-image job and the OG-image job. You design a single banner
at 1200×630, set it as the featured image, and your platform pipes it straight into the og:image tag. The cover
block is a separate decision entirely - it is editorial, used only when a long article needs a visual break, and most
posts have none at all.
You only reach for a second file in two specific cases. First: your featured image is the wrong shape for a link card - a tall portrait or a perfect square that gets ugly-cropped to 1.91:1 - so you make a dedicated OG version sized 1200×630. Second: you want the social preview to say something the on-page image does not, like a punchier hook or a different headline. Both are real, neither is the default. If you are not in one of those two situations, stop at one image.
A quick decision guide
- Need a banner for the post on your own site? That is the featured image. Make one.
- Want it to look right when the link is shared? Size that same file to 1200×630; your CMS will use it as the OG image. Done - no second file.
- Is your featured image a portrait, a square, or otherwise off-ratio? Then make a dedicated OG image at 1200×630 so the link card crops cleanly.
- Want the social card to carry different text than the page? Make a separate OG image with that text. Otherwise skip it.
- Breaking up a long article with an in-body banner? That is a cover block (WordPress) - editorial, optional, unrelated to the two above.
For the exact pixel targets behind all of this, the sizing breakdown lives in what size a blog cover image should be.
The short version: featured and OG are two roles one file usually fills, and “cover image” is a third word that means whichever thing your tool decided it means. Get the 1200×630 banner right and you have solved the two that matter for most posts. The names are messier than the work.
When you want to make that one file, open Lede - it has a 1200×630 OG preset built in, a gallery of templates to start from, and a one-click 2x WebP export. Make one image that earns all three names.