Social Media Character Limits: Instagram, X, LinkedIn & More

Most common limits

The figures below reflect known limits as of October 2026. Platforms change their rules from time to time, especially for paid accounts. If your text exceeds the limit, the app will usually prevent you from posting or cut it off.

• Instagram: Captions can be up to 2,200 characters; bios up to 150.
• X (formerly Twitter): 280 characters per post for free accounts (subscribers get higher limits); links count as 23 characters and emojis count as 2.
• LinkedIn: Posts can be up to 3,000 characters; profile headlines up to 220; About sections up to 2,600.
• YouTube: Titles can be up to 100 characters; descriptions up to 5,000.
• WhatsApp: The profile About line can be up to 139 characters.
• SMS: 160 characters per message without accents; with accents or emojis, encoding changes and the limit drops to 70 per message.
• Google (page titles and descriptions): There’s no strict limit, but Google truncates based on display width. As a guideline, aim for about 60 characters for titles and 155 to 160 for descriptions.

What counts as a character?

• Spaces and line breaks count. Text with lots of blank lines uses up characters.
• Emojis can count as one or two characters, depending on the platform. Compound emojis (with skin tones, families, or flags) are made up of multiple code points and may count as more.
• Accented characters count as one character on social media, but they can change the SMS limit.
• Links: On X, links always count as 23 characters. On other platforms, they count according to their actual length, and many don’t make caption links clickable.

The Character Counter shows how much of each platform’s limit you’ve used in real time, including X and SMS character-counting rules.

The limit that really matters: the “see more” cutoff

The maximum limit matters less than how much text people see before it gets cut off. On Instagram and LinkedIn, only the first few lines of a caption appear in the feed; the rest is hidden behind “more.” On YouTube, only the beginning of the description appears until someone clicks. So:

• Put the key information (what it is, price, date, or call to action) in the first sentence.
• Save hashtags and technical details for the end.
• On YouTube titles, the first words show up on every screen, so put less important details at the end.

How to shorten text that’s over the limit

1. Cut the introduction: “Today I wanted to share with you that...” can almost always go.
2. Replace long phrases with shorter ones: “at this point in time” with “now,” or “with the goal of” with “to.”
3. Turn lists into sentences, or the other way around—whichever takes up less space.
4. Move details to the first comment, a link, or an image with text.
5. Read it out loud: if you stumble over a sentence, you can probably simplify it.

If you’re writing to a word count (for an essay, article, or summary), use the Word Counter to see your word, sentence, and paragraph counts, as well as your reading time.

Bios and status messages: more meaning in less space

• Say what you do in a few words, without relying on generic adjectives.
• Use line breaks to separate ideas (but remember that each line break counts).
• Include a way to get in touch or a next step, such as a link, email address, or “message for a quote.”
• Don’t overuse “fancy” Unicode characters (bold or italic styles). Screen readers used by people who are blind may read them confusingly, and the platform’s search may not find them.

Google titles and descriptions

If you manage a website or online store, each page’s title and description can appear in search results. Google truncates text that doesn’t fit the screen width, so put your main keywords first and aim for a title of around 60 characters. The description doesn’t directly affect rankings, but it can influence clicks: sum up the page and give people a reason to open it.

Frequently asked questions