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Social media character limits

Two numbers matter per platform, and only one of them is ever published: the limit that stops you posting, and the point where the feed hides the rest behind “…more”.

PlatformCountVerdict

Runs in your browser. Nothing you type leaves this page.

The table, marked by how well each number is actually known

This is the part other cheat-sheets leave out. A hard limit is usually documented by the platform. Truncation points almost never are — they are measured by people looking at feeds, they differ between phone and desktop, and they change without announcement. Publishing both kinds as if they were equally solid is how the same wrong number gets copied between blog posts for years.

PlatformHard limitHow knownFoldHow known
X (Twitter)280 weighteddocumentedno fold
Threads500documentedno fold
Instagram2,200documented~125observed
LinkedIn3,000observed~210observed
Facebook63,206observed~477observed

Instagram also documents 30 hashtags and 20 @ mentions per caption. X is the only platform here whose limit is not a character count at all — see below.

What “observed” means, precisely

LinkedIn’s API documentation confirms a maximum exists — it returns FIELD_LENGTH_TOO_LONG and tells you to shorten your commentary — but it does not print the number anywhere. 3,000 is the figure everyone uses and it matches behaviour; it is not something LinkedIn states. Facebook’s 63,206 is the same story, older and repeated more often. We would rather tell you that than pretend.

X does not count characters at all

It counts weight. Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic and Thai cost 1 each. CJK and emoji cost 2. Every URL costs a flat 23 however long it is. So 150 Japanese characters is 300 to X — over the limit — while the notes app, CMS field or generic counter you drafted it in reports 150 and plenty of room. The counter above applies the real rule for X and plain length for the rest, which is what those platforms use.

Threads now carries more than 500

Since September 2025 Threads has allowed up to 10,000 characters of text attached to a post, separate from the 500-character post itself. The post limit did not change; there is now a second place for the long version to live.

These limits, in the composer

PostSiete Lens puts every one of these in front of you while you type, on the site you are typing on — including the fold line drawn where LinkedIn and Instagram will actually cut. Free Chrome extension, no account, no trial. It reads — it never posts for you.

Add to Chrome — free →

Questions

Why does my post get cut off before the limit?

Because the limit and the fold are different things. Instagram allows 2,200 characters and shows about 125 of them in the feed; LinkedIn allows around 3,000 and shows about 210. Everything after that exists and almost nobody scrolling sees it.

Do links use up my characters?

On X, yes — a flat 23 each, whatever the link’s real length, so shortening it saves nothing. On the other platforms a link costs its literal length.

Why do other sites give different numbers?

Mostly because they copy each other, and because truncation points genuinely differ by device and change unannounced. That is why the table above says which numbers the platform publishes and which are observed.

Is anything I type sent to a server?

No. The counting runs in your browser; the page makes no network request with your text.

Sources