Social Media Character Limits
Every platform, every field, in one table — plus where your text actually gets cut off, which is rarely the same number.
All platforms at a glance
The figure that matters is usually not the hard cap. Most feeds truncate long text behind a “see more” link, and almost nobody taps it — so the visible limit is the one to write to, and the hard cap is just the point where the platform stops accepting characters.
| Platform | Main post | Visible before cut | Bio |
|---|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) | 280 · 25,000 Premium | 280 | 160 |
| 2,200 | ~125 | 150 | |
| 3,000 | ~140 mobile / 210 desktop | 2,600 (About) | |
| 63,206 | ~477 | 101 | |
| TikTok | 2,200 (4,000 some accounts) | ~100 | 80 |
| YouTube | 5,000 (description) | ~157 | 1,000 (channel) |
Limits are set by the platforms and change periodically; figures reflect the current publicly documented caps.
X (Twitter)
280 characters for free accounts; X Premium raises it to 25,000 and Premium Basic to 4,000. Long posts display collapsed in the timeline, so the first two lines still carry the post regardless of how much you write underneath.
Two quirks are worth knowing. Every URL is rewritten through the t.co shortener and counts as exactly 23 characters no matter its real length — a short link never saves you anything. Usernames in replies no longer count at all. Engagement data has consistently favoured posts well under the cap, in the 70 to 130 character range, where the whole message is readable at a glance.
| Field | Limit |
|---|---|
| Post (free account) | 280 characters |
| Post (X Premium) | 25,000 characters |
| Direct message | 10,000 characters |
| Bio | 160 characters |
| Display name | 50 characters |
| Username (handle) | 15 characters |
| Image alt text | 1,000 characters |
Captions allow 2,200 characters but the feed cuts at roughly 125 before the “more” link, which makes the opening sentence the single most important part of any Instagram post. Hashtags are capped at 30 per post and count toward the 2,200 — moving them into the first comment is a common way to keep the caption clean without losing reach.
| Field | Limit |
|---|---|
| Caption (post or Reel) | 2,200 characters |
| Bio | 150 characters |
| Comment | 2,200 characters |
| Username | 30 characters |
| Hashtags | 30 per post |
| Alt text | 100 characters |
Posts run to 3,000 characters, with the feed truncating around 140 characters on mobile and 210 on desktop. The 220-character headline is the field most people underuse: it follows you into every feed, comment and search result, which makes it the highest-leverage text on the profile.
| Field | Limit |
|---|---|
| Post | 3,000 characters |
| Comment | 1,250 characters |
| Headline | 220 characters |
| About / Summary | 2,600 characters |
| Article body | 110,000 characters |
| Article headline | 100 characters |
| Connection request note | 300 characters |
Facebook, TikTok and YouTube
Facebook’s 63,206-character cap is effectively theoretical — the feed truncates at about 477 characters, and posts in the 40 to 80 character range have historically drawn the most engagement. TikTok captions allow 2,200 (4,000 on some accounts) with only around 100 visible over the video, so the caption works as a hook rather than a description. YouTube’s 100-character title limit is the tight one, and search results typically show only the first 70; the first 157 characters of the description are what appear above the fold and in search snippets.
| Platform | Field | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Post | 63,206 characters | |
| Comment | 8,000 characters | |
| Page description | 255 characters | |
| Bio / Intro | 101 characters | |
| Messenger message | 20,000 characters | |
| TikTok | Caption | 2,200 (4,000 some accounts) |
| TikTok | Bio | 80 characters |
| TikTok | Comment | 150 characters |
| TikTok | Username | 24 characters |
| YouTube | Video title | 100 characters |
| YouTube | Video description | 5,000 characters |
| YouTube | Comment | 10,000 characters |
| YouTube | Tags (total) | 500 characters |
| YouTube | Channel description | 1,000 characters |
| YouTube | Playlist title | 150 characters |
Writing ad copy? The ad copy checker counts every field against its platform limit at once, so you can see what fits before you paste it into the ad manager.
Open Ad Copy Checker →Advertising character limits
Ad formats are stricter than organic posts and the limits are enforced at upload, so copy that overruns is rejected rather than truncated. Google Ads is the tightest: 30 characters per headline leaves room for about four words.
| Platform | Field | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | Headline | 30 characters | 3–15 per responsive search ad |
| Google Ads | Description | 90 characters | 2–4 per ad |
| Google Ads | Display path | 15 characters | up to 2 |
| Google Ads | Callout asset | 25 characters | 2+ recommended |
| Google Ads | Sitelink text | 25 characters | 2+ recommended |
| Facebook Ads | Primary text | 125 visible · 2,200 cap | cut at “See more” on mobile |
| Facebook Ads | Headline | ~27 visible · 40 cap | |
| Facebook Ads | Description | ~27 visible · 30 cap | often hidden entirely |
| LinkedIn Ads | Sponsored intro text | ~150 visible · 3,000 cap | |
| LinkedIn Ads | Sponsored headline | ~70 visible · 200 cap | |
| LinkedIn Ads | Text Ad headline | 25 characters | hard limit |
| LinkedIn Ads | Message Ad subject | 60 characters | |
| TikTok Ads | Ad text / caption | 100 characters | ~4 lines before “See more” |
| TikTok Ads | Display name (brand) | 2–20 characters |
How platforms actually count characters
Spaces and punctuation always count. There is no platform that exempts them, and they typically account for 15 to 20 percent of a post.
Most emoji count as two. Emoji sit outside the basic character range and are measured as two units on X, TikTok and most other platforms. Compound emoji — family groupings, flags, skin-tone variants — are assembled from several joined code points and can cost five or more characters each, which is how a short caption full of emoji silently overruns.
Links may be fixed-cost or free. X charges a flat 23 characters for any URL. Instagram and TikTok count the raw URL in full, even though it is not clickable in a caption. Facebook and LinkedIn count the URL until the link preview loads, at which point you can usually delete the text and keep the preview.
Non-Latin scripts count differently. Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count as two on several platforms including TikTok, which halves the effective length of a CJK caption. X applies a weighted system in which CJK characters count double.
Line breaks are characters too. Each one typically costs one or two characters, so a heavily formatted post with white space between every line can lose 30 or 40 characters to formatting alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related tools
For a full breakdown of any text, use the character counter or the word counter. Campaign copy is covered by the ad copy checker. For longer-form writing, see the words to pages converter and the reading time calculator.