One table, eleven platforms, every field that has a cap — posts, bios, comments, usernames, and the truncation points that decide what people actually see. The numbers below are the same verified dataset that powers our live character counters, last checked against current platform behavior in June 2026.
Bookmark it for cross-posting days: the platform that cuts your caption is never the one you remembered to check.
| Field | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| InstagramLive counter | ||
| Caption | 2,200 characters | — |
| Visible before “… more” | ~125 characters | Feed view; the exact cutoff varies slightly by device and line breaks. |
| Hashtags | 5 per post (rolling out since Dec 2025) | Counted across caption and comments; older accounts may still see the legacy 30 allowance. Hashtags count toward the 2,200-character total. |
| Bio | 150 characters | — |
| Comment | 2,200 characters | — |
| Username | 30 characters | — |
| TikTokLive counter | ||
| Caption (API / scheduling tools) | 2,200 characters | The TikTok Content Posting API caps video captions at 2,200. |
| Caption (in-app) | up to ~4,000 characters | TikTok expanded in-app captions from 2,200; availability has varied by account and region. |
| Bio | 80 characters | Some accounts have reported longer bio fields; 80 is the widely enforced default. |
| Comment | ~150 characters | — |
| Username | 24 characters | — |
| FacebookLive counter | ||
| Post | 63,206 characters | The long-standing hard limit — an engineering in-joke (63,206 = “63,2Oh!6”). |
| Visible before “See more” (desktop) | ~477 characters | Approximate; varies with line breaks and surface. |
| Visible before “See more” (mobile) | ~125 characters | — |
| Page intro / bio | 101 characters | The short “Intro” blurb on profiles and Pages; widely cited limit. |
| Comment | ~8,000 characters | — |
| Ad primary text (recommended) | ~125 characters | Ads accept more, but Meta’s guidance is to keep primary text short. |
| LinkedInLive counter | ||
| Post | 3,000 characters | — |
| Visible before “…see more” | ~210 desktop / ~140 mobile | Approximate; line breaks shorten the visible portion. |
| Headline | 220 characters | — |
| About section | 2,600 characters | Only roughly the first 300 (desktop) / 200 (mobile) show before “see more”. |
| Comment | 1,250 characters | — |
| Company page tagline | 120 characters | — |
| X (Twitter)Live counter | ||
| Post (free) | 280 characters | — |
| Post (Premium) | up to 25,000 characters | Requires an X Premium subscription; shown collapsed in the feed (as of June 2026). |
| Any URL | counts as 23 characters | X wraps links in t.co, so length is fixed no matter the URL. |
| Bio | 160 characters | — |
| Display name | 50 characters | — |
| Username (handle) | 15 characters | — |
| Direct message | 10,000 characters | — |
| ThreadsLive counter | ||
| Post / reply / quote | 500 characters | — |
| Long text attachment | up to ~10,000 characters | Threads has rolled out expandable text attachments for longer writing; availability may vary. |
| Links | reported not to count toward the limit | Community documentation indicates URLs don’t consume post characters; behavior may change. |
| Topic tag | 1 per post | Threads allows a single topic tag instead of multiple hashtags. |
| Bio | 150 characters | — |
| BlueskyLive counter | ||
| Post | 300 graphemes | The AT Protocol post schema sets maxGraphemes: 300, with a 3,000-byte UTF-8 ceiling. |
| Bio / profile description | 256 graphemes | — |
| Display name | 64 graphemes | — |
| Image alt text | generous (~2,000 graphemes) | Bluesky encourages detailed alt text; the protocol allows far more than the post itself. |
| MastodonLive counter | ||
| Post (default) | 500 characters | The stock Mastodon limit; instance admins can modify it, and some instances allow thousands. |
| Any URL | counts as 23 characters | Links are counted at a fixed 23 characters no matter their real length. |
| Mentions | only the @username part counts | The instance domain in a mention is excluded from the count. |
| Content warning text | counts toward the limit | — |
| Bio | 500 characters (default) | — |
| Display name | 30 characters | — |
| PinterestLive counter | ||
| Pin description | 500 characters | Only roughly the first 50–60 characters surface in feeds before truncation. |
| Pin title | 100 characters | Around 40 characters typically display in feeds. |
| Board name | 50 characters | — |
| Board description | 500 characters | — |
| Profile bio | 160 characters | — |
| Hashtags | up to 20 | Pinterest has de-emphasized hashtags; descriptions rank via keywords, not tags. |
| Google BusinessLive counter | ||
| Post body | 1,500 characters | — |
| Visible in search/Maps before “Read more” | ~250–300 characters | Varies by surface and device; front-load the offer. |
| Business description | 750 characters | Only roughly the first 250 show before the cutoff. |
| Event/offer title | 58 characters | Commonly cited display limit for post titles on event and offer posts. |
| Hashtags | not a discovery mechanism | GBP posts surface via your listing, not tags — spend characters on specifics instead. |
| YouTubeLive counter | ||
| Video title | 100 characters | Search results typically display ~60–70 on desktop, ~50–60 on mobile. |
| Video description | 5,000 characters | About the first 157 characters show under the player before “Show more”. |
| Tags | 500 characters combined | Across all tags; individual tags max ~30 characters. |
| Channel description | ~1,000 characters | — |
| Hashtags | first 3 shown above the title | YouTube ignores all hashtags on videos that use an excessive number (its docs have cited a 60-hashtag threshold). |
| Comment | ~10,000 characters | — |
How each network counts, where it truncates, and the quirks that bite cross-posters — with the live counter for checking an actual draft.
The caption cap is generous, but the feed fold decides what gets read — write the first line as if it’s the whole post. Hashtag rules have been tightening via a gradual rollout, so the hashtag row carries a hedge worth reading.
TikTok runs two caption realities at once: what the app allows and what the posting API (used by every scheduling tool) enforces. Draft to the stricter number if you schedule, and treat the caption as search text — TikTok indexes all of it.
The post ceiling is so high it’s effectively decorative; the “See more” fold is the real limit. Write link posts and long stories for the fold, not the cap.
Posts, headlines, and the About section all have separate budgets, and the feed fold lands early — the professional-sounding preamble is usually what gets clipped. Open with the point.
The free-tier post limit is the strictest mainstream cap, and X’s counting has quirks: links are flattened to a fixed length while some characters count double. The counter linked below mirrors X’s own math.
Short cap, conversational culture. Longer text attachments exist for essays, but the feed rewards posts that fit the native limit — threading beats truncating.
Bluesky counts user-perceived characters (graphemes), so emoji count the way humans count them. The cap is tight; alt text gets its own generous budget, so put detail there.
The famous number is only the default — each instance sets its own, and some allow far more. Check your home instance before assuming, and remember links count at a flat length.
Pins are search results, not feed posts: titles and descriptions are keyword fields with separate caps, and the visible window in the feed is shorter than either. Front-load searchable phrasing.
Posts get clipped early on Maps and Search surfaces, so the visible window is much smaller than the cap. Lead with offer + action; the business description has its own separate budget.
Titles and descriptions have separate budgets and different jobs — titles truncate in search results, and only the first lines of a description show above the fold. Tags share one combined pool.
Guide
Every platform really has two limits. The hard cap is the number the publisher enforces: go over it and the post is rejected, by the app or — worse — by the API hours later when your scheduled post tries to go out. The truncation point is softer but more consequential: the place where the feed clips your text behind a “more” link. Most platforms truncate long before the cap, so the visible window is the limit your hook actually competes in.
The table flags both kinds of row. Treat caps as a publishing constraint and truncation as a writing constraint: front-load the one sentence that must survive the fold, then spend the rest of the budget on readers who tap through.
Platforms don’t even agree on what a “character” is. Some count user-perceived characters, so an emoji is one unit; others count encoding units, so the same emoji eats two or more; URLs are flattened to a fixed length on some networks and counted literally on others. That is why a caption that fits with room to spare on one network can bounce on another at the “same” length.
The per-platform notes under the table call out each network’s counting quirks. When you cross-post, check the strictest destination first — it is almost always the short-form text network — and write to that, or let a scheduler trim per platform from one master draft.
Limits drift: platforms raise caps for subscribers, roll out changes gradually by account, and occasionally enforce different numbers in the app than in the API that scheduling tools post through. Each row below comes from one maintained dataset, verified against current official documentation and observed platform behavior, with hedge notes wherever a limit varies by account, instance, or posting method.
The “last verified” date applies to the whole table. If you spot a platform behaving differently, trust what the publisher tells you at posting time — and expect the gradual-rollout cases to differ between accounts for months.
Among the major networks, the short-form text platforms — X’s free tier, Bluesky, and Threads — sit at the bottom of the table, with image- and video-first platforms allowing far longer captions. The exact, current numbers are in the table above; they’re verified against platform behavior rather than copied between blog posts.
Yes, on every platform in the table — hashtags, mentions, emoji, and line breaks all consume budget. The trap is that platforms count emoji differently: some count one symbol as one character, others as two or more encoding units. Per-platform counting quirks are flagged in the notes under the table.
A few times a year across the industry — usually expansions for paying subscribers or gradual rollouts that hit some accounts before others. This table is maintained as one dataset with a single “last verified” date (currently June 2026), and hedged wherever a limit varies by account, instance, or posting method.
Behavior varies by platform and posting method: some apps block the publish button, some silently truncate, and APIs reject the request outright — which is the worst case for scheduled posts, because the failure happens hours after you wrote the caption. Counting before you schedule (or using a scheduler that counts per network) avoids it.
Most limits roundups copy each other and go stale; platforms also genuinely enforce different numbers in-app versus through their APIs. This table states which context each number applies to, hedges gradual rollouts, and carries a verification date instead of presenting every figure as universal.
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SocialKit shows each network’s character limit while you compose one post for all 11 platforms — over-limit drafts get flagged before they fail at publish time.
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