Character Limits for X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and More (2026)
Published 2026-10-27
Every platform caps how much you can write, and the limits are rarely shown until you hit them. Here’s a reference for the most common ones. Check your text against all of them at once with the character counter.
Social media posts and captions
| Platform | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 characters | Paid subscribers can post much longer text |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 characters | Only the first line or two show before “more” |
| Facebook post | 63,206 characters | Short posts usually get more engagement |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 characters | Text is cut after a few lines with “see more” |
| Pinterest pin description | 500 characters | Pin titles allow 100 |
| YouTube title | 100 characters | Around 60–70 show in most layouts |
| YouTube description | 5,000 characters | The first lines appear above “more” |
Platforms change their limits from time to time, so if a number matters for a campaign, check the platform’s help pages.
Text messages (SMS)
A single SMS holds 160 characters of standard text. Longer messages are split into parts of 153 characters each and joined on the recipient’s phone. If the message contains any emoji or characters outside the basic SMS alphabet, the whole message switches to a different encoding that holds only 70 characters per message (67 per part). That’s why a single emoji can double what a long text costs to send through some services.
Google search snippets
- Title tag: about 50–60 characters, or 600 pixels wide, before Google cuts it off.
- Meta description: about 120–160 characters on desktop, less on mobile.
Since Google measures pixels rather than characters, the SERP preview tool gives a more exact answer. Our guide to title and meta description length explains the details.
How characters are counted
- Spaces count as characters on almost every platform.
- Line breaks count too, usually as one character each.
- Emoji may count as one or two characters depending on the platform; X, for example, counts most emoji as two.
- Links on X are shortened and counted as 23 characters, whatever their length.
Writing within the limit
- Put the key message in the first line, which is often all people see before tapping “more”.
- Cut filler words like “just”, “really” and “in order to”.
- Use numerals instead of words for numbers.
- Check the total in the character counter, and the word count and reading time in the word counter.