About the Social Media Character Counter
This social media character counter checks one piece of text against the character limits of every major platform at once. Paste a post or caption, pick the platform you are writing for, and it shows how many characters that platform will count, how many you have left, and a table with the result for X, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook ads.
Platforms do not all count the same way, which is why a simple character count can be wrong. X counts every link as 23 characters and most emoji and CJK characters as two. Threads counts emoji by their byte size. TikTok’s API measures captions in UTF-16 units, where an emoji takes two. This counter applies each rule, so social media managers, creators and copywriters can repurpose one post across channels without surprises.
Limits were checked against official help pages and developer documentation in October 2026: X 280 characters for standard accounts, Threads 500, Instagram captions 2,200 (with at most 30 hashtags and 20 @-mentions), TikTok captions 2,200 via the posting API, LinkedIn posts 3,000, YouTube titles 100 and descriptions 5,000. The Facebook ad figures are Meta’s recommended lengths for feed ads (headline 27, primary text up to 150) rather than hard caps.
With the default inputs, the characters counted by this platform is 139. Change any value above to recalculate instantly.
How to use the social media character counter
- 1Paste your post, caption or title.
- 2Choose the platform you are writing for.
- 3Check the platform’s count, characters remaining and status.
- 4Use the table to see which other platforms the same text fits.
- 5Trim the text, links or hashtags until it fits everywhere you plan to post.
Formula and method
Each platform has its own counting rule. For X, every URL counts as 23 characters because links are shortened with t.co; characters in the Latin, punctuation and common-symbol ranges weigh 1, while emoji (including combined emoji with skin tones or joiners) and CJK characters weigh 2. Threads counts most characters as 1 but emoji by their UTF-8 byte length (usually 4). TikTok’s posting API measures captions in UTF-16 units, so an emoji uses 2.
Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook are counted as Unicode characters (code points). Hashtags are words that start with # after a space or the start of the text, and mentions start with @. A post fits a platform when the count is at or below that platform’s limit.
- limit
- Platform character limit (or recommended length for Facebook ads)
- weight
- Per-character weight used by X
- UTF-16
- Encoding where emoji take two units
Worked examples
Promo post with a link, emoji and hashtags on X
The text is 146 plain characters, but X replaces the 31-character link with a fixed 23 and counts the 🎉 emoji as 2, giving 139 of 280. It fits 7 of the 9 platforms — everywhere except the 100-character YouTube title and the 27-character Facebook ad headline.
Same post checked for Threads
Threads counts the emoji by its UTF-8 size (4 bytes) instead of as one character, so the post counts as 149 of 500 characters.
YouTube title that is too long
The title is 113 characters, 13 over YouTube’s 100-character limit. It would fit everywhere except the YouTube title and the 27-character Facebook ad headline, so 7 of 9 platforms.
Frequently asked questions
What is the character limit on X (Twitter)?+
Standard X accounts can post up to 280 characters. X’s counting rules make every link count as 23 characters and most emoji and Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters count as 2, so a post can hit the limit sooner than a plain character count suggests.
How long can an Instagram caption be?+
Instagram captions can be up to 2,200 characters, with a maximum of 30 hashtags and 20 @-mentions, according to Meta’s Instagram developer documentation. Only the first couple of lines show before "more", so lead with the important part.
What is the LinkedIn post character limit?+
LinkedIn posts can be up to 3,000 characters, per LinkedIn’s help center. Only the opening lines show in the feed before the "…see more" link, so the first sentence carries most of the weight.
How many characters can a YouTube title have?+
YouTube video titles are limited to 100 characters and descriptions to 5,000 characters, and YouTube rejects titles or descriptions that contain invalid characters. Search results and suggested videos usually show far fewer title characters, so front-load keywords.
What is the TikTok caption limit?+
TikTok’s Content Posting API accepts captions up to 2,200 UTF-16 units, in which an emoji counts as two. The TikTok app itself may allow longer captions, but staying under 2,200 keeps posts compatible with scheduling tools.
What is the Threads character limit?+
Threads text posts are limited to 500 characters. Meta’s Threads API documentation notes that emoji are counted by their UTF-8 byte length, so each typical emoji uses about 4 of your 500 characters.
Sources