Character Limits Cheat Sheet: Every Platform That Matters
Twitter/X 280, SMS 160, SEO title 60, Instagram caption 2,200, LinkedIn post 3,000. The full hard-cap reference for 2026.
Why this table exists
Every platform truncates differently. Some collapse a "Show more" link, some split your message into multiple billed parts, some reject the submission outright. Knowing the hard cap before you draft is the difference between writing once and rewriting three times.
These are the platform-stated hard caps. Engagement often drops off well before the ceiling; that's a separate question of style, not of what's allowed.
Social media
- Twitter / X post: 280 characters (free) · 25,000 (Premium, but anything past 280 collapses behind "Show more")
- Twitter / X bio: 160 characters
- Twitter / X display name: 50 characters
- Instagram caption: 2,200 characters · ~125 visible before "more"
- Instagram bio: 150 characters
- Facebook post: 63,206 characters · ~480 visible before "see more"
- LinkedIn post: 3,000 characters · ~210 visible before "see more"
- LinkedIn headline: 220 characters
- YouTube title: 100 characters
- YouTube description: 5,000 characters · ~157 visible before "show more"
Messaging
- SMS (single segment): 160 characters · longer splits across multiple billed segments
- SMS (Unicode, e.g. emoji): 70 characters per segment
- WhatsApp message: 65,536 characters per message
- iMessage: no documented hard cap; very long messages may attach as a text file
Search engines
- SEO title (Google desktop): 50 to 60 characters before truncation
- SEO title (Google mobile): 60 to 70 characters
- Meta description (desktop): ~155 characters
- Meta description (mobile): ~120 characters
- Open Graph title: 60 to 90 characters
- Open Graph description: 200 characters
How to write to these limits
Use our character counter. It shows a live bar for each of these limits and warns past 80% so you can edit before you hit the ceiling.
The principle behind the numbers
Platforms cap text length to control feed density, not to punish writers. The "visible before more" cutoffs are usually 1/8 to 1/20 of the hard cap. That's the window where 80% of your readers will or won't keep reading. Treat the visible number as the real target and the hard cap as the safety rail.
Takeaway
Print this table. Or bookmark it. Either way, never draft a Twitter post or meta description without checking it first. The time you save on rewrites pays for itself by the second post.
WordCounters Editorial Team
Linguists, editors & engineersA small team of writers, editors, and engineers maintaining WordCounters.app. We test every claim against current platform documentation and update posts when the underlying rules change.