Social Media Character Limits: The Complete 2026 Cheat Sheet

Every platform cuts you off at a different length, and most don't warn you until your carefully written post gets truncated with an ugly "…". Here's the complete reference — bookmark it, or just paste your draft into the free Word Counter, which tracks the important limits live as you type.

The limits that matter

The "visible before truncation" trap

The hard limit isn't the number that matters most — it's the fold. Instagram shows roughly the first 125 caption characters before "more"; LinkedIn about 210; Facebook about 477. Whatever your hook is, it has to land before that point or most people never see it.

Practical rule: write your first sentence as if it's the whole post. Front-load the payoff, not the wind-up.

Why "characters" isn't always what you think

• Spaces count on every platform above. "Characters excluding spaces" is a different number used mainly in translation billing and some academic submissions — a good counter shows both.
• URLs on X always count as 23 characters, no matter how long they are, thanks to the t.co wrapper.
• Emoji often count as 2+ characters because they're multi-byte — an emoji-heavy post hits limits faster than it looks.
• SMS drops to 70 characters per segment if your message contains any character outside the basic GSM alphabet (including some smart quotes and emoji) — that's why one emoji can turn one text into three.

Word counts, for the longer stuff

While we're at it, the targets people ask about most:

• Blog post for SEO: no magic number, but competitive queries are usually won by 1,000–2,500 word pieces that actually answer the question.
• Meta description: ~25 words (160 characters).
• 5-minute speech: ~650 words at a comfortable 130 words/minute speaking pace.
• 1-minute video script: ~130–150 words.

The Word Counter shows reading time (200 wpm) and speaking time (130 wpm) alongside the counts, so you can size a script or article without doing the math.

Count as you write, not after

The workflow that saves the most rewriting: draft directly in the Word Counter with the platform limits panel open. Every limit updates live, over-limit platforms turn red, and — because it runs entirely in your browser — your unpublished drafts never leave your device.