Social Media Character Counter

How to use the character counter

1. Paste your text once. A caption, a LinkedIn post, a bio, a video title: anything you are about to publish.
2. Read the table. Each row compares your text with one platform’s limit. Green bars are fine, amber means you are above 90% of the limit, red means you are over.
3. Check the extras. The summary counts words, lines, hashtags, mentions and emoji, and warns you if you have more than the 5 hashtags Instagram allows on a post.

Social media character limits (checked 6 October 2026)

We only list limits that the platform itself publishes. Where we could not find an official number, we say so instead of repeating figures from other websites.

TikTok’s limit comes from its developer documentation for posting videos through the API; the app itself may allow longer captions. Limits change, so if a platform rejects text that our counter accepts, trust the platform and tell us so we can update the page.

How platforms count characters

Not every platform counts the same way, which is why one caption can show slightly different numbers in different tools:

• Characters as you see them. For Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook the counter counts each visible character once, including spaces, line breaks, punctuation and each emoji.
• X weights characters. Links always count as 23, emoji as 2, and Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters as 2, as described in X’s developer documentation. A post full of emoji or links fills up faster.
• TikTok counts UTF-16 units. Its API counts in UTF-16 “runes”, so many emoji count as 2 or more.

Some emoji are built from several characters (skin tones, flags, families), and platforms may count them as more than one. If you are within a few characters of a limit and use emoji, leave a small margin.

The visible part matters more than the limit

Most platforms show only the first line or two of a caption or post before “more” or “See more”, and long titles can be cut off on small screens. The limit tells you what you are allowed to publish; the opening tells people whether to keep reading. Put the hook, the keyword and the main point first, then use the rest of the space for detail.

Tips for writing to a limit

• Write the full version first, then cut filler words such as “really”, “just” and “in order to”.
• Replace long links with a “link in bio” line on Instagram, or a short link where the platform allows it.
• Keep hashtags to the few that describe the post; on Instagram the maximum is 5. YouTube ignores all hashtags on a video with more than 60.
• Write one version per platform. A LinkedIn post, an Instagram caption and a YouTube description do different jobs.

Writing for four platforms every week is a job in itself. We manage Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube accounts, with captions written for each platform. Start with a free social media audit, draft captions with the Instagram caption generator or titles with the YouTube title generator.

Writing a LinkedIn headline or About section? Our LinkedIn profile optimization checklist covers every profile section with LinkedIn’s own specifications.

Posting on LinkedIn? Find your best time to post on LinkedIn from your own analytics, and schedule posts with LinkedIn’s built-in scheduler.

Want bold words or bullet lists in a LinkedIn post? Use the LinkedIn text formatter. For Instagram, the Instagram caption formatter cleans up line breaks and hashtags.

Writing a YouTube description? The YouTube description generator builds one with chapters and hashtags and counts against the 5,000-character limit.