X 280, Instagram 2,200, LinkedIn 3,000 — but the visible portion is far shorter. Character limits, fold rules and URL/emoji counting behavior for six major platforms (X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube) in 2026, verified against authoritative sources.
There is no single "right length" for a social media post every platform has its own character ceiling, its own fold rule and its own counting behaviour. X allows a 280-character post, LinkedIn allows 3,000; but a LinkedIn post is truncated after roughly 210 characters with a "See more" link in the feed. Instagram captions accept up to 2,200 characters but only the first 125 are visible before the "more" cutoff. This guide pulls together the official 2026 character limits, visibility fold points and the counting rules that most cheat sheets get wrong across six major platforms X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. For a quick reference table you can also open our Social Media Character Limits tool.
X (Twitter) — 280 characters, plus X Premium's 25,000-character long post
On X, the ceiling for a free-account post is still 280 characters and has been since Twitter doubled it from 140 in 2017. Standard posts, replies and quote posts all live under that cap. To exceed it you have two options: a post thread or an X Premium subscription.
X Premium (formerly Twitter Blue) allows subscribers to publish long-form posts up to 25,000 characters. There is an important nuance though: those long posts are still truncated to the first 280 characters in the timeline, with a "Show more" link expanding the rest. Your hook still lives in the first 280 characters; the remaining 24,720 are only read by people who tap through. A 25,000-character ceiling does not mean you should use 25,000 — the only post format that appears in full in a timeline scroll is still a 280-character one.
Other fields: bio 160 characters, DM 10,000 characters, display name 50, username 15, image alt text 1,000, poll option 25.
X has an unusual counting rule: every URL is counted as exactly 23 characters, regardless of its real length. That is because X wraps all links through its t.co shortener. A 9-character URL and a 200-character URL both cost you 23 characters of your budget. Emoji counting is different too: basic emojis usually count as 2 characters, skin-tone modifiers or ZWJ-joined composite emojis can count as 4-7 characters or more. On an emoji-heavy post near the ceiling, removing a couple of emojis is faster than rewriting a sentence. Before posting you can use our Twitter/X Character Counter it applies the 23-character URL rule and shows live hashtag and mention counts.
Instagram — 2,200-character caption but a 125-character hook window
Instagram captions are capped at 2,200 characters and have been since Instagram raised the limit in 2018. In the feed only the first 125 characters are visible before the "more" link truncates the rest. So the ceiling is 2,200 but your hook needs to land before character 125 most readers never tap "more".
Other fields: bio 150 characters, username 30, display name 30, comment 2,200 (same as caption), DM around 1,000 per message. Reels descriptions share the 2,200 caption cap but the fold is even shorter in the Reels feed, so shorter descriptions typically work better.
The hashtag limit in 2026 is still 30 hashtags per post; adding a 31st causes Instagram to reject the whole caption. But 30 is no longer the recommended target since Instagram's late-2025 algorithm update, most sources report that 3-5 niche-specific hashtags outperform 15-30 generic ones. And hashtags eat into your 2,200-character caption budget: 30 hashtags at an average of 15 characters take 450 characters before you have written anything else, which is why moving hashtags into the first comment is still a common workaround.
TikTok — 2,200 or 4,000? Both answers are correct
TikTok is the one major platform where sources genuinely disagree on the caption limit. The reason: TikTok's native app currently accepts up to 4,000 characters in the video description field, while the official Content Posting API caps direct-post video captions at 2,200 UTF-16 runes. So if you publish through a third-party scheduler or API you are on the 2,200 limit; if you publish directly from the TikTok app you have the 4,000 ceiling. The honest answer: if you plan to exceed 2,200 characters, publish from the native app and treat any documented scheduler cap as authoritative for that tool.
Other TikTok fields: bio 80 characters the tightest bio among major platforms username 24 characters, display name 30, comment 150. TikTok's very short comment cap is a deliberate design choice: comments are meant to be reactions, not essays.
Visibility: a TikTok caption is truncated at roughly 100-150 characters in the feed with a "more" link. The 4,000-character ceiling gives you room for SEO-style keyword-rich descriptions but engagement is still decided in the first 100 characters. TikTok's search traffic keeps growing (especially with younger users who use it as a Google alternative), so longer captions can help discovery but the hook has to close before character 100.
LinkedIn — 3,000-character post, 220-character headline
The LinkedIn post limit has been 3,000 characters since the 2020 expansion from 1,300. In the feed, a LinkedIn post is truncated at roughly 210 characters on desktop and 140 on mobile before the "See more" link. Because most LinkedIn traffic is mobile, your hook needs to fit under 140 characters.
The profile headline is 220 characters — LinkedIn raised this from 120 to 220 in 2020 and many outdated cheat sheets still show 120. The headline appears under your name in every search result, every comment and every tag, which makes it the single most-displayed piece of copy on your entire profile. The About section allows 2,600 characters but only the first ~300 are visible before "See more". Comments cap at 1,250 characters, messages at 8,000, InMail body at 1,900.
Connection request notes carry a quirk: 200 characters on free accounts, 300 characters on Premium / Sales Navigator / Recruiter. So the popular "LinkedIn connection request is 300 characters" claim is incomplete — it depends on the tier. And LinkedIn Articles should not be confused with posts: Articles are a separate long-form publishing format that runs up to roughly 110,000 characters. If your content genuinely needs more than 3,000 characters, write an Article or upload a PDF carousel changing format is more effective than fragmenting a post.
Facebook — 63,206-character theoretical limit, 477-character practical limit
Facebook has the highest post ceiling of any major social platform: 63,206 characters. But the visible portion in the feed truncates at roughly 477 characters on desktop and 125 on mobile with a "See more" link. So you can write 63,206 characters, but multiple studies show that posts of 40-80 characters get the highest engagement. The "keep it short" advice for Facebook is easy to verify empirically: long blog-style posts load but do not get read.
Other fields: comment 8,000 characters, personal profile bio (short intro) 101 characters, page/profile username 50. Facebook Ads fields carry different and tighter limits (headline about 30-40, primary text with a suggested 90-125) this guide covers organic posts; if you publish paid content, stick to Ads Manager's own live counters.
YouTube — 100-character title, 5,000-character description
YouTube video titles cap at 100 characters, descriptions at 5,000 characters. But in search results and suggested videos, only the first ~70 characters of the title appear before an ellipsis truncates the rest. So keeping the title under 70 characters and putting your primary keyword at the start is usually more effective for click-through than filling the full 100.
Descriptions follow a similar rule: on the video page the first ~157 characters are visible on desktop (~100 on mobile) before the "Show more" cutoff. The same first 157 characters also feed into the Google search snippet. So the SEO-critical portion of a YouTube description is its first 157 characters that is where the primary keyword, the hook and one clear call should live.
Comment cap 10,000, community post 5,000, channel description 1,000. Tags share a combined 500-character budget — but YouTube confirmed in 2026 that tags now carry minimal ranking weight; the real work is done by title, description and viewer signals (CTR, watch time, session duration). The hashtag limit is 15 maximum; add more and YouTube ignores every hashtag on the video.
Counting rules: URLs, emojis and the fold
URL counting varies by platform. X counts every URL as a fixed 23 characters (because of the t.co shortener). Every other major platform counts URLs at their real length. A 60-character link in an Instagram caption costs the full 60 characters. Same on LinkedIn. So a link shortener only saves budget outside of X (and on X a bit.ly URL is also wrapped by t.co, so there is no gain).
Emoji counting on most platforms follows Unicode code-unit rules. Basic emojis (😊) typically cost 2 characters, skin-tone modifiers (👋🏽) 4, composite family emojis (👨👩👧) 7-11 or more. This matters when you are near the ceiling — removing an emoji or two is far faster than rewriting a sentence.
The "fold" is different on every platform. The gap between a platform's character ceiling and its practically readable length is often 10-20x: X 280/280 (all visible), Instagram 2,200/125, LinkedIn 3,000/140-210, Facebook 63,206/477, YouTube title 100/70. Write to the fold, not the ceiling any character that never appears in the feed is technically written but functionally missing.
Summary and Toolmatico tools
The 2026 ceiling limits by platform: X 280 characters (Premium 25,000), Instagram caption 2,200 (visible 125), TikTok caption 2,200-4,000 (API vs native), LinkedIn post 3,000 (visible 140-210), Facebook post 63,206 (visible 477), YouTube title 100 (visible 70) and description 5,000 (visible 157). Every value in this guide has been cross-checked against multiple authoritative sources for 2026 but platforms do update these numbers occasionally, so for edge cases check the relevant platform's official developer or help documentation.
Two Toolmatico tools where you can validate these limits in practice: the Twitter/X Character Counter (with the 23-character URL rule and hashtag/mention counters) and the Social Media Character Limits reference (all six platforms in one glance). Running the counter before you publish is far more effective than shortening in a panic afterwards.