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character limits

Social Media Character Limits (2026)

There are two numbers per platform: the hard limit that stops you typing, and the fold where readers stop seeing. Most 'limit' articles only give you the first. You need the second.

updated 7 min read

Everything below was checked against the platforms’ current composers. Counting by hand is a mug’s game — paste your draft into the character counter and it shows live counts against every limit on this page.

The quick table

PlatformPost / captionWhere it folds
Instagram2,200~125 chars in feed
TikTok4,000~1 line under the video
X (free)280no fold
X (Premium)25,000~280, then “Show more”
Facebook63,206~477 chars
LinkedIn3,000~210 desktop / ~140 mobile
YouTube description5,000~157 chars / 3 lines
Threads500no fold
Bluesky300no fold
Pinterest description500~50 in feed

The pattern: write your hook inside the fold, put substance behind it. The fold is a headline slot — treat it like one.

Bios & profiles

PlatformBioUsername / handle
Instagram15030
TikTok8024
X (Twitter)16015
LinkedIn headline220—
YouTube channel description1,00030 (handle)
Threads50030 (mirrors Instagram)
Pinterest50030
Facebook page intro10150

TikTok’s 80 characters is the tightest bio on any major platform — roughly twelve words. If you can write that one, the rest are easy. For Instagram specifically, we broke down what actually fits (with 40+ examples) in the Instagram bio guide.

Platform notes that save you a repost

Instagram

  • Caption 2,200 · bio 150 · comment 2,200 · alt text 100.
  • Up to 30 hashtags are allowed, but Instagram itself now recommends 3–5.
  • The name field (the bold line, 64 chars) is searchable — put a keyword there, not a second copy of your handle.

TikTok

  • Caption 4,000 · bio 80 · comment 150.
  • The 4,000-character caption is indexed by TikTok search — it’s an SEO field. Front-load the phrase you want to rank for; only the first line shows on screen.

X (Twitter)

  • Post 280 (free) or 25,000 (Premium) · bio 160 · display name 50 · DM 10,000.
  • Links are shortened to a fixed 23 characters no matter how long the URL is.
  • Long Premium posts still collapse at ~280 — the first sentence does all the work.

YouTube

  • Title 100 · description 5,000 · comment 10,000.
  • Search results cut titles around 70 characters — put the keyword and the hook before that.
  • The first ~157 description characters double as your search snippet. Write them like a meta description.

LinkedIn

  • Post 3,000 · headline 220 · About section 2,600 · comment 1,250.
  • The desktop fold lands around 210 characters — about two short lines. LinkedIn’s whole “hook culture” exists because of this number.

Everywhere else

PlatformLimitNotes
Reddit title300post body 40,000, comment 10,000
Discord message2,0004,000 with Nitro
Telegram message4,096media caption 1,024
WhatsApp about139status text 700
Snapchat caption80per text layer

Write once, fit everywhere

  1. Draft the long version — the Instagram/LinkedIn caption with substance.
  2. Pull the first sentence out as the fold test: does it work alone? That’s your X post and your TikTok first line.
  3. Run the whole thing through the character counter to check every platform at once, and the case converter if a platform needs a different style.

Do it with a tool

Word & Character Counterword counterCaption Generatorcaption ideasCase Convertercase converter

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Frequently asked questions

Do emojis count as one character?+

Usually more than one. Most platforms count Unicode code points, and a single emoji can be 2–11 of them (a family emoji is up to 11). If your text is emoji-heavy, you have less room than the counter in your head suggests — paste it into our character counter to see the real number.

Why did my post get cut off below the limit?+

Because the display truncation point is much lower than the hard limit. Instagram allows 2,200 caption characters but folds the caption after roughly 125; LinkedIn allows 3,000 but folds around 210 on desktop. The hard limit stops you typing — the fold decides what people read.

Does maxing out the caption help or hurt reach?+

Neither, directly — no platform rewards length itself. What matters is whether the text before the fold earns the tap on 'more'. A strong first line with a 2,000-character caption behind it outperforms both a weak long caption and a lazy short one.

Are scheduler limits the same as app limits?+

Often not. Scheduling tools go through platform APIs, which sometimes enforce lower limits than the native app. If a scheduler rejects a caption that fits in the app, that's why — trim to the API's number or post natively.