A reference guide to character limits on 24 popular platforms — social networks,
messaging apps, SEO meta fields, and advertising tools. Paste your text into the counter
above and compare it against the limits below. Each entry covers the exact limit, what
the platform counts, what it hides behind an expand button, and what happens when you go
over.
Twitter / X Character Limit: 280
Limit: 280 characters per tweet. Twitter expanded from 140 to 280 characters
in November 2017 for most languages; Chinese, Japanese, and Korean remained at 140 because each
character conveys more information.
What counts: Every Unicode character counts as 1 — including emoji. URLs are
automatically shortened to t.co links and always count as exactly 23 characters regardless of
actual URL length. @mentions and #hashtags count normally toward the 280-character total.
What's hidden: Nothing is collapsed in the feed — tweets are shown in full. Only
attached photos and videos are displayed as previews.
When exceeded: Twitter disables the Post button and shows a red circle countdown
(e.g. "–12"). At the free tier, the only workaround is splitting content across a thread. X Premium
subscribers can publish posts up to 25,000 characters, shown collapsed with a "Show more" button
in the feed.
Instagram Caption Character Limit: 2,200
Limit: 2,200 characters per photo or video caption on feed posts. Instagram Stories
and Reels captions share the same enforced field but are displayed overlaid on media and are naturally
shorter in practice.
What counts: All text, including #hashtags and @mentions. You can add up to 30
hashtags per post — any beyond 30 are silently ignored or cause the post to fail.
What's hidden: After approximately 125 characters (about 2 lines in the app),
Instagram collapses the caption with a "more" tap required to expand. In Explore and on mobile
search, the visible snippet is even shorter.
When exceeded: The Share button is blocked. Instagram does not prevent typing
past 2,200, but it rejects the post on submission with an error message.
LinkedIn Post Character Limit: 3,000
Limit: 3,000 characters for personal status update posts. Comments are limited
to 1,250 characters. LinkedIn Articles (long-form publishing via the editor) support up to approximately
125,000 characters.
What counts: All text including #hashtags, @mentions, and URLs. Links to external
pages count toward the character limit.
What's hidden: Posts longer than 200 characters are collapsed in the feed with
a "…see more" link. Only the first 200 characters are visible without expanding.
When exceeded: LinkedIn disables the Post button and turns the character counter
red. Company page updates follow the same 3,000-character limit.
Facebook Post Character Limit: 63,206
Limit: 63,206 characters for regular personal and page posts — far beyond any
practical use. Facebook Ads primary text: recommended 125 characters, hard limit 255 characters.
What counts: All text. Hashtags and URLs count normally.
What's hidden: The News Feed collapses posts at approximately 477 characters
and shows a "See More" link. On mobile, the threshold is sometimes lower. In practice, most readers
never see content past the fold.
When exceeded: Facebook blocks submission with an error. In practice you are
far more likely to hit the 477-character "See More" fold than the 63,206-character hard limit.
Threads Character Limit: 500
Limit: 500 characters per post on Threads, Meta's Twitter/X alternative launched
in July 2023.
What counts: All text including @mentions, #hashtags, and URLs. Links are counted
at approximately 24 characters each after shortening.
What's hidden: Posts within the 500-character limit are displayed in full in
the feed without a "more" button.
When exceeded: Threads shows a character counter and disables the Post button
once you exceed 500 characters.
Bluesky Post Character Limit: 300
Limit: 300 characters per post on Bluesky, built on the AT Protocol. This is
intentionally set near Twitter's original 140-character spirit but higher than Twitter's current
280.
What counts: All text. Unlike Twitter, URLs count toward the character limit
at their actual displayed length — there is no automatic t.co-style shortener. @mentions also
count in full.
What's hidden: Nothing is collapsed — posts are shown in full in the feed.
When exceeded: The Post button is disabled. The AT Protocol lexicon enforces
the 300-character limit at the API level, so all third-party clients also enforce it.
Mastodon Toot Limit: 500 Characters (Default)
Limit: 500 characters per toot (post) on the default Mastodon server configuration.
Individual instances (servers) can raise or lower this limit — some popular servers allow 1,000
or even 5,000 characters per post.
What counts: All text. Links are displayed shortened but counted at 23 characters
toward the limit, similar to Twitter's approach. Content Warnings (spoiler text) have their own
separate counter, typically up to 1,500 characters.
What's hidden: Nothing is collapsed unless the author adds a Content Warning,
which hides the post body behind a toggle requiring a click to reveal.
When exceeded: The Publish button is disabled and the counter turns red. If your
account is on an instance with a higher limit, you may not encounter this on a standard post.
TikTok Caption Character Limit: 4,000
Limit: 4,000 characters for video captions on TikTok. The limit was expanded
from 2,200 in late 2022 and early 2023 for most accounts.
What counts: All text including #hashtags. TikTok recommends 3–5 relevant hashtags
for discoverability; each hashtag counts toward the 4,000-character total.
What's hidden: In the TikTok feed, the caption is collapsed after approximately
100 characters with a "...more" tap required to expand the full text.
When exceeded: TikTok displays a character counter and blocks posting once you
exceed 4,000 characters.
Pinterest Pin Description Limit: 500 Characters
Limit: 500 characters for pin descriptions and board descriptions. Pin titles:
100 characters.
What counts: All text. Hashtags count toward the 500-character total. Pinterest
recommends keeping descriptions keyword-rich for search visibility.
What's hidden: In search results and the home feed, only the first 50 characters
of a description appear before truncation with "…". This makes the opening words critical for
click-through.
When exceeded: Pinterest blocks saving the pin. Because only 50 characters appear
in search results, front-load your most important keywords at the very start of the description.
YouTube Video Title Limit: 100 Characters
Limit: 100 characters for video titles. YouTube Shorts and live stream titles
share the same 100-character hard limit.
What counts: All characters including spaces and punctuation. Separators like
|, –, and : are commonly used in titles to separate topic from brand name.
What's hidden: In YouTube search results and on the watch page sidebar, approximately
the first 60–70 characters appear before the title is cut off with "…". The full title is visible
on the video's own watch page.
When exceeded: YouTube Studio blocks saving the video details until the title
is within 100 characters.
YouTube Video Description Limit: 5,000 Characters
Limit: 5,000 characters for video descriptions. Channel "About" description:
1,000 characters. YouTube comments: 10,000 characters.
What counts: All text, URLs, timestamps (e.g. "0:00 Intro"), and #hashtags. Timestamps
formatted correctly are automatically converted to clickable chapter links in the video player.
What's hidden: Below the video on desktop, approximately the first 100–150 characters
appear before "Show more." On mobile the visible snippet is even shorter — sometimes just 2–3
lines.
When exceeded: YouTube Studio blocks saving the description change until you
reduce the character count below 5,000.
Discord Message Limit: 2,000 Characters
Limit: 2,000 characters per message across all channel types: text channels,
DMs, voice channel chats, threads, and forum posts. Discord Nitro does not increase this limit
for regular messages.
What counts: All text including Markdown formatting characters (asterisks for
bold, backticks for code, etc.). Discord Embeds sent by bots can contain up to 6,000 characters
spread across all embed fields combined.
What's hidden: Nothing is truncated — messages are shown in full. Extremely long
messages add a scrollable area within the message bubble.
When exceeded: Discord shows the error: "Your message is too long. Please shorten
it and try again." The send button is also disabled as you approach the limit. Workaround: upload
the content as a text file attachment.
Telegram Message Limit: 4,096 Characters
Limit: 4,096 characters per text message in private chats, groups, channels,
and bot messages. Captions on photos and videos: 1,024 characters.
What counts: All Unicode characters. Formatting markup (bold, italic, code via
MarkdownV2 or HTML) adds syntax characters that count toward the limit.
What's hidden: Nothing is automatically collapsed. Long messages scroll within
the chat window.
When exceeded: Telegram silently refuses to send — the send button does not respond
in most clients, with no explicit error message shown. Workaround: send the content as a .txt
file attachment, which bypasses the message character limit entirely.
WhatsApp Status Character Limit: 700
Limit: 700 characters for text Status updates (the ephemeral 24-hour story-like
posts). Group descriptions: 512 characters. Group names: 25 characters.
What counts: All text. Emoji count as 1–2 characters depending on their Unicode
representation. WhatsApp does not publish an official per-message limit for regular chat messages;
in practice chat messages can be very long.
What's hidden: Long text Status posts may wrap across multiple screens. There
is no automatic "show more" collapse within WhatsApp Status.
When exceeded: WhatsApp shows a character counter and blocks posting the Status
once you exceed 700 characters.
Snapchat Caption Limit: 250 Characters
Limit: 250 characters for the text caption overlaid on a snap (photo or video).
Spotlight video descriptions: 160 characters. Snapchat username: 15 characters.
What counts: All text. Emoji and special characters count toward the 250-character
limit.
What's hidden: Captions are overlaid on the image or video and are not truncated
— but long captions may be automatically scaled to a smaller font size to fit, which can make
them harder to read.
When exceeded: Snapchat stops accepting character input at 250 — the text field
prevents further typing rather than blocking on submission.
Slack Message Limit: 40,000 Characters
Limit: 40,000 characters per message — effectively unlimited for everyday workplace
communication. Channel names: 80 characters. Workspace name: 100 characters. Custom emoji names:
100 characters.
What counts: All text. Slack's mrkdwn (Markdown-like) formatting characters count
toward the total. Code blocks and inline code backticks count normally.
What's hidden: Very long messages are shown in full within a scrollable message
area. There is no automatic "show more" collapsing in channels.
When exceeded: Slack blocks sending and suggests converting the content to a
text snippet (via the attachment menu), which supports much larger content and renders with optional
syntax highlighting.
SMS Character Limit: 160 (Latin / GSM-7 Encoding)
Limit: 160 characters per SMS segment when using GSM-7 encoding — the standard
set covering the Latin alphabet, digits, and common symbols (@, £, $, !, ?, +, -, space, and others).
What counts: Standard Latin characters count as 1 each. Extended GSM-7 characters
(€, [, ], {, }, |, ~, \, ^) count as 2 characters each because they require an escape
sequence in the encoding, consuming 14 bits instead of 7.
What's hidden: Nothing is hidden — multi-part SMS is split and delivered to the
recipient as a single concatenated message on modern phones.
When exceeded: Messages over 160 characters are split into 153-character segments
(7 characters are used per segment for the concatenation header). A 161-character message sends
as 2 segments; a 307-character message sends as 3. Carriers may bill each segment separately.
SMS Character Limit: 70 (Unicode / Non-Latin)
Limit: 70 characters per SMS segment when the message contains any Unicode character
outside GSM-7 — including emoji, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, or certain accented
characters not covered by GSM-7.
What counts: Adding even a single emoji or non-GSM character switches the entire
message to UCS-2 encoding, reducing the single-message limit from 160 to 70 for every character
in that message.
What's hidden: Multi-part Unicode SMS is delivered as a single message on modern
devices, but each 67-character segment (3 bytes reserved for the concatenation header) is a separate
billable unit.
When exceeded: A 71-character Unicode message sends as 2 segments of 67 characters
each. SMS APIs like Twilio or AWS SNS report the segment count before sending so you can optimize
campaign costs.
Reddit Post Title Limit: 300 Characters
Limit: 300 characters for post titles. Self-post (text post) body: 40,000 characters.
Comments: 10,000 characters.
What counts: All Unicode characters. Subreddit flair text and post tags are separate
from the title character count.
What's hidden: Long titles are displayed in full in the Reddit feed — they wrap
across lines rather than truncating. Very long titles may appear awkward in some Reddit apps.
When exceeded: Reddit blocks the Post button and shows a counter indicating how
many characters over the limit you are.
HTML Title Tag for SEO: ~60 Characters
Limit: No HTML specification character limit, but Google truncates title tags
in search results at approximately 600 pixels — which corresponds to 55–60 characters for typical
mixed-case Latin text. Wider characters (W, M) consume more space; narrower characters (i, l,
1) consume less.
What counts: All characters including spaces, separators (|, —, :), and the brand
name often placed at the end (e.g. "Page Title | Brand"). The entire string is measured in rendered
pixel width, not raw character count.
What's hidden: Google replaces the visible overflow with an ellipsis in SERPs.
The brand name at the end of the title is typically the first to be cut.
When exceeded: Google may display a truncated title or rewrite it entirely with
content from the page's H1 or body text. There is no crawling or ranking penalty, but click-through
rates can suffer when the key message is hidden.
Meta Description for SEO: ~160 Characters
Limit: No HTML limit, but Google displays approximately 155–160 characters (~920
pixels) in desktop search results. Mobile SERPs may show only ~120 characters due to narrower
viewport width.
What counts: All characters. Google reads any length of meta description but
only displays the portion that fits its pixel budget. Special characters like em-dashes (—) take
1 character count but varying pixel widths.
What's hidden: Characters beyond the pixel budget are replaced with "…" in the
search snippet. Google may override your meta description entirely with a passage from the page
body if it considers the page content more relevant to the specific search query.
When exceeded: Extra content is never shown in SERPs. There is no ranking penalty
for long meta descriptions, but calls-to-action placed after character 160 are invisible to searchers
who do not click through.
Google Ads Headline Limit: 30 Characters
Limit: 30 characters per headline in Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) and Performance
Max (PMax) ads. Each RSA supports up to 15 headlines; Google tests combinations automatically
and shows 3 headlines per ad impression.
What counts: All characters. Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) syntax ({KeyWord:Default
Text}) uses the actual keyword length against the limit — if the keyword is too long, the
fallback "Default Text" is used instead.
What's hidden: Nothing — headlines are shown in full within the ad. Google may
rearrange or omit some headlines based on predicted click-through rate.
When exceeded: Google Ads editor shows an over-limit indicator and prevents saving
the ad until all headlines are within 30 characters. Description lines have a separate 90-character
limit (up to 4 descriptions, 2 shown per ad).
Email Subject Line: ~50 Characters (Recommended)
Limit: RFC 2822 permits subject lines up to 998 characters, but email clients
truncate far earlier. Gmail shows approximately 77–100 characters on desktop; Outlook shows ~60–70;
the iPhone Mail app shows 35–40 characters in portrait mode.
What counts: All characters. Emoji in subject lines are supported by most modern
clients and typically display as 1–2 characters wide, though they encode as 2–4 UTF-8 bytes. Prefixes
like "Re:" and "Fwd:" count toward the visible character budget.
What's hidden: Anything past the client's pixel-width cutoff is clipped and never
visible without opening the email. The preheader (preview text after the subject) adds approximately
85–100 extra characters visible in the inbox list view.
When exceeded: The subject line sends successfully (no server rejects it), but
the truncated portion is permanently hidden from recipients who do not open the email. Best practice:
keep subject lines to 40–50 characters to ensure the key message is visible across all devices
and clients.
Medium Article Subtitle: 140 Characters
Limit: 140 characters for the subtitle (short description field) of a Medium
article, shown below the title in cards and feeds. Article titles: 100 characters. Article body:
no practical character limit.
What counts: All characters including spaces and punctuation.
What's hidden: Long subtitles approaching 140 characters may be truncated in
Medium's card previews depending on the layout template. Medium auto-uses the subtitle as the
SEO meta description when it fits within ~156 characters; otherwise it pulls content from the
article body.
When exceeded: Medium blocks saving the subtitle and displays an over-limit indicator
until you reduce the length.