Social media character counter

Count your post

Character limits for every platform

Checked against each platform’s own documentation on 24 October 2026. Platforms change these without warning, so the date matters.

Facebook Page posts can run to tens of thousands of characters, so length is almost never the problem there. What matters on Facebook, as on Instagram, is the first line or two people see before the post folds behind “See more”. Put the point of the post up front.

X Premium accounts can post up to 25,000 characters, but only the first 280 show before “Show more”, and apps that post for you through X’s standard connection are held to 280.

Why the same post counts differently on each app

X weighs characters

X does not simply count letters. Ordinary letters, numbers and punctuation weigh 1. Emoji and Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters weigh 2, so a post written in Japanese fits 140 characters, not 280. Every link counts as 23 however long it really is, because X rewrites links through its own short address. A 90-character link costs you 23; a 10-character link also costs 23.

Bluesky counts what you see

Bluesky’s 300 is counted in what it calls graphemes: the characters as a person reads them. A family emoji built from several pieces still counts as 1, and so does a flag. Links count at full length in the post text, which is why a long link eats into a Bluesky post far more than it does on X.

Threads, Instagram and TikTok

Threads allows 500 characters in the post itself, and since September 2025 a separate text attachment of up to 10,000 characters for longer pieces. Instagram captions run to 2,200 characters, and since December 2025 Instagram accepts no more than 5 hashtags on a post. TikTok captions are 2,200 characters for a video sent from a scheduling app.

Writing one post that fits everywhere

The shortest limit wins. If a post is going to X and Bluesky as well as Instagram, write it for 280 first, then let the longer platforms have the extra lines.

1. Lead with the pointThe first sentence is the only one every platform shows in full, and the only one many people read.
2. Put the link lastOn X it costs 23 wherever it sits. Last is where people expect it, and where it is easiest to keep when the text has to shrink.
3. Keep hashtags to five or fewerInstagram refuses more than 5, and a wall of tags reads as spam everywhere else.
4. Write the long version onceInstagram, Facebook and Threads have room for the story. X and Bluesky get the first two sentences.

This is what cross-posting in Bloom does for you. You write one post and pick the platforms. Before anything goes out, Bloom checks each platform’s limit, and when a caption is too long for X or Bluesky it shortens the words in the middle, never your link at the end. The guide to posting on several platforms at once covers the rest of each platform’s rules.

Frequently asked questions