A YouTube title allows 100 characters and a description 5,000. Two rules catch people out: through the YouTube Data API the 5,000 is bytes, not characters, and a video with more than 60 hashtags has every one of them ignored.
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documented means YouTube Shorts publishes the number. observed means people measured it, and it can change without notice.
| What | Limit | How known |
|---|---|---|
| Title | 100 characters | documented |
| Description, in YouTube Studio | 5,000 characters | documented |
| Description, through the Data API | 5,000 bytes | documented |
| Hashtags on a video | 60, then all ignored | documented |
| Hashtags shown by the title | up to 3 | documented |
100 characters, documented in YouTube Help and in the Data API, which also refuses < and > in a title.
5,000 characters in YouTube Studio, documented. Through the Data API, which is how upload and scheduling tools send it, the limit is 5,000 bytes. Plain English is one byte a character; accented letters take two and most emoji four, so a description that fits in Studio can be too long for an upload tool.
Add more than 60 hashtags and YouTube ignores every hashtag on the video, documented. Up to three of them appear by the title, the ones YouTube considers most engaging, which are not necessarily the first three you wrote.
Since 15 October 2024 a vertical or square video up to three minutes long is categorised as a Short, documented. The #Shorts tag is not what makes it one.
This page checks one platform. PostSiete takes one idea and writes a native draft for LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, each measured against its platform’s limit while it is written, and previewed as it will post.
Start free, no card → Free plan, then $12/month Pro or $39/month Siete. Flat, not per seat. Self-hostable.PostSiete Lens puts the real count inside the composer on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads and Facebook while you type. It does not run on YouTube Shorts yet. Free Chrome extension, no account, no trial. It reads — it never posts for you.
Add to Chrome — free →Because the tool you are using uploads through the Data API, which counts bytes. Accents, non-Latin scripts and emoji take more than one byte each.
No. YouTube categorises a Short by its shape and length: vertical or square, up to three minutes.
No. The counting runs in your browser; the page makes no network request with your text.
< or >; a description of “maximum length of 5000 bytes.”