Social Media Character Limits: The Complete Guide

When creating content for social platforms, staying within character limits is essential to prevent awkward truncations, broken formatting, or posting errors.

Whether you are crafting a punchy headline, writing a thread, or optimizing your bio, this guide outlines the exact character limits across all major social media platforms.

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Quick Reference: Character Limits by Platform

Here is a summary of standard character and text limits for popular networks:

Platform	Post / Message Limit	Bio / Profile Limit	Comment Limit
X (Twitter)	280 chars (standard)	160 chars	280 chars
LinkedIn	3,000 chars	220 chars (headline)	1,250 chars
Instagram	2,200 chars	150 chars	2,200 chars
Facebook	63,206 chars	255 chars (bio)	8,000 chars
Threads	500 chars	150 chars	500 chars
YouTube	5,000 chars (description)	1,000 chars (about)	10,000 chars

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1. X (formerly Twitter) Character Limits

• Standard Posts: 280 characters
• X Premium Long Posts: Up to 25,000 characters
• Bio / Profile: 160 characters
• Display Name: 50 characters
• Username (Handle): 15 characters
• Direct Messages (DMs): 10,000 characters

Optimization Tip for X

While 280 characters is the maximum, tweets between 70 and 100 characters often achieve higher engagement and retweet rates because they leave room for quick quoting and scanning.

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2. LinkedIn Character Limits

• Personal Post / Feed Update: 3,000 characters (approx. 400–500 words)
• Company Page Update: 3,000 characters
• Profile Headline: 220 characters
• Profile “About” Summary: 2,600 characters
• LinkedIn Articles (Long-form): 110,000 characters (approx. 15,000 words)
• Comments: 1,250 characters

Optimization Tip for LinkedIn

LinkedIn collapses long posts after the first 140–210 characters behind a “…see more” link. Make sure your opening sentence acts as a strong hook to encourage readers to expand the post.

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3. Instagram Character Limits

• Post Captions: 2,200 characters
• Bio: 150 characters
• Username: 30 characters
• Story Text: Unlimited, but best kept concise for mobile viewports
• Hashtags: Up to 30 hashtags per post

Optimization Tip for Instagram

Captions truncate after roughly 125 characters on the mobile feed. Place your primary message and call-to-action before this threshold.

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4. Facebook Character Limits

• Status Updates: 63,206 characters
• Page Description: 255 characters
• Comments: 8,000 characters

Optimization Tip for Facebook

Despite the high limit, posts with 40 to 80 characters consistently receive the highest engagement rates. Keep organic updates concise and direct.

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5. Threads Character Limits

• Posts: 500 characters
• Bio: 150 characters

Threads provides almost double the standard capacity of an X post, making it ideal for self-contained thoughts without needing multi-post chains.

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6. YouTube Character Limits

• Video Title: 100 characters (70 characters recommended to avoid search truncation)
• Video Description: 5,000 characters
• Channel Description (About): 1,000 characters
• Video Tags: 500 characters total

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How to Check Your Character Count

Before publishing your copy to any network, paste your draft into our Free Character Counter to instantly check character counts, spaces, word counts, and line breaks in real time.