Social media character limits for every network (2026)

Most networks cap how much text a post can hold, and a few count in ways that catch people out: X counts every link as 23 characters, Bluesky counts an emoji as one character, and Threads' API counts it by its size in bytes. Below are the official limits for all nine networks Unisenda posts to, taken from each network's own help center and developer docs and checked in October 2026. Where a network doesn't publish a limit, we say so.

"Through apps" means through the network's official API, which scheduling apps use.

Social media character limits at a glance

How links, emoji and other characters count

Unless a network says otherwise, assume everything you type counts: spaces, line breaks, hashtags, @mentions and links. A few networks document their own counting rules, and they don't agree:

• X: every link counts as 23 characters however long it is, every emoji counts as 2, and Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count as 2 each. Photos and videos don't count, and neither do the @names X adds automatically at the start of a reply.
• Bluesky: the limit is 300 characters as you see them: what looks like one character counts as one, even an emoji built from several pieces. The text is also capped at 3,000 bytes; ordinary posts won't reach that, but long runs of complex emoji or some non-Latin scripts can.
• Threads: through its API, an emoji counts by its size, not as one character, so a single emoji can use up several of your 500 characters.
• TikTok: captions sent through its API are measured in UTF-16 units, so most emoji count as 2.
• YouTube: the Help Center says 5,000 characters for descriptions, but the API measures 5,000 bytes, so accented letters and emoji take up more than one each.

The details for each network

Instagram

Captions can be up to 2,200 characters, according to Instagram's developer docs. The bigger change is hashtags: Instagram's Help Center now says you can use up to 5 hashtags on a post. Meta's developer docs still list 30, but the Help Center limit for posts is 5, so plan for 5. The developer docs also allow up to 20 @mentions per caption.

Facebook

We couldn't find a character limit for posts in Facebook's Help Center or Meta's developer docs (checked October 2026), so we don't quote one. Write for the first line or two anyway, since that's what people see before they decide to read on.

TikTok

TikTok's developer docs cap video captions posted through its API at 2,200 characters, and that's the number scheduling apps work with. Hashtags and @mentions are part of the caption. Photo posts work differently: a title of up to 90 characters plus a description of up to 4,000. We couldn't find a caption limit for the TikTok app itself in TikTok's Help Center, so be careful with higher numbers quoted online.

YouTube

Video titles can be up to 100 characters and descriptions up to 5,000, according to YouTube's Help Center, and neither can include invalid characters. YouTube's API is specific: no angle brackets (the less-than and greater-than signs) in either field. If you add hashtags, up to three can show by your title, and if a video has more than 60, YouTube ignores all of them.

LinkedIn

Posts can be up to 3,000 characters, per LinkedIn's Help Center. If you need more, LinkedIn suggests writing an article instead. Our guide to scheduling LinkedIn posts covers the rest.

X

Standard accounts get 280 characters, counted as above. X Premium subscribers, on every tier, can post up to 25,000 characters, and everyone can read those longer posts. X recommends no more than 2 hashtags per post as best practice, but there's no limit.

Threads

Posts can be up to 500 characters. For longer writing, Threads lets you attach up to 10,000 characters of text to a post; through the API, that works on text-only posts without a poll. Also through the API, a post can contain no more than 5 links, and only one topic tag is used: tags can be 1 to 50 characters, and if you type several, the first valid one counts.

Pinterest

Pin titles can be up to 100 characters and descriptions up to 800, per Pinterest's Pin specs. Descriptions don't show in the home or search feed, but Pinterest uses them to decide who should see your Pin, so they're still worth writing. Pinterest's specs page for standard Pins and ads adds that, depending on the device, only the first 40 characters of a title may show in feeds (30 in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and other double-byte languages). Through the API, alt text can be up to 500 characters and the destination link up to 2,048.

Bluesky

Posts can be up to 300 characters and 3,000 bytes, per Bluesky's post schema. An emoji counts as one, however it's built. There's no fixed link length like X's 23, so the link text in your post counts like any other text.

Hashtag and mention limits

• Instagram: up to 5 hashtags per post, per the Help Center, and up to 20 @mentions per caption, per the developer docs.
• YouTube: add more than 60 hashtags and all of them are ignored; up to 3 can show by your title.
• Threads: one topic tag per post, 1 to 50 characters long.
• X: no limit, but X recommends 2 at most.
• Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Bluesky: we couldn't find an official hashtag limit. Hashtags still count toward the character limit.

To count a caption's hashtags against each of these limits and spot repeats, use the free hashtag counter.

How to write one caption that fits everywhere

The tightest limits for post text are X's 280 and Bluesky's 300, so start there and expand:

1. Write the core message in 280 characters or less. On X, each link counts as 23; on the others, plan for the link's full length.
2. Put the hook and any call to action in the first line, where people decide whether to read on.
3. Use 5 hashtags at most (Instagram's limit), and remember Threads only uses one topic tag.
4. Go easy on emoji: X counts each as 2, and Threads counts them by bytes.
5. Leave out angle brackets, which YouTube rejects, and keep to 5 links or fewer for Threads.
6. Then give roomier networks a longer version: up to 3,000 characters on LinkedIn, 2,200 on Instagram and TikTok, 800 for a Pinterest description, and 5,000 for a YouTube description, plus a YouTube title of up to 100.

To see how a caption measures up on all nine networks at once, paste it into our free caption length checker, which counts the way each network does. To see where it runs past each limit in a feed, try the free post preview. If you post the same idea everywhere, our guide on how to post to all social media at once covers the workflow, and social media image sizes covers the photos.

How Unisenda helps you stay within character limits

Unisenda is a social media scheduler for creators and small brands, and it posts to all nine networks above. For text:

• Write once in All networks, the shared caption. Each account you select gets its own tab with its own caption, title and settings, so a long LinkedIn version and a short X version can live in the same post.
• A character counter for each network: Instagram 2,200, TikTok 2,200, X 280, Threads 500, Bluesky 300, LinkedIn 3,000, Pinterest description 800 and YouTube description 5,000, with YouTube titles up to 100. X posts are counted against the standard 280, not Premium's longer limit.
• Facebook doesn't publish a limit, so Unisenda uses its own cap of 5,000 characters for Facebook posts.
• Checks flag what a network would reject before you schedule, such as a missing YouTube title.
• Previews show how the post will look on each network.

You can try the composer, counters and previews in the demo without signing up; nothing is ever published from it. When you're ready, start a 7-day free trial: you add a card and pay $0 today. Cancel before the 7-day trial ends and you pay nothing.