Choose a platform in the Character Limit panel, then paste or write your post. The panel shows how much of the limit you have used and how many characters are left, measured in the unit that platform documents.
Published limits
| Text | Limit | How it is measured | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| X post | 280 | Weighted: most Latin letters and punctuation count 1; emoji and Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters count 2; every link counts 23 | X developer docs |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | Characters; also at most 30 hashtags and 20 @ tags | Meta developer docs |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | Characters | LinkedIn Help |
| TikTok video caption | 2,200 | UTF-16 code units, for captions posted through TikTok's Content Posting API | TikTok for Developers |
| YouTube video title | 100 | Characters; < and > are not allowed | YouTube Data API |
| YouTube description | 5,000 | Bytes of UTF-8, so accented letters and emoji use more than one | YouTube Data API |
| SMS, one segment | 160 or 70 | 160 characters of the GSM 7-bit alphabet; 70 once any other character, such as an emoji, is used | 3GPP TS 23.038 and TS 23.040 |
Platforms change their limits and apps sometimes differ from the published figures. If a post is rejected close to the limit, trust the platform and shorten it.
Why the same post has different lengths
The Characters tile above the editor counts what a reader sees: a flag or a family emoji is one character. Platforms often count the stored pieces instead. An emoji can be two UTF-16 units and four UTF-8 bytes, and X counts it as 2 whatever its size. That is why the panel switches unit with the platform:
- X uses a weighted estimate based on X's published rules; links are counted as 23 each.
- TikTok counts UTF-16 code units, the length JavaScript reports.
- YouTube descriptions count UTF-8 bytes.
- SMS shows the encoding (GSM-7 or UCS-2) and the number of segments; a long message is split into parts of 153 or 67 characters.
Write within the limit
- Put the key message in the first line: feeds and notifications often show only the start of a post.
- Use the line break tools to tidy pasted text; every line break is a character.
- Pick Custom limit for anything else, such as a form field or an ad headline.
Search engines are different: Google does not set a length limit for titles or meta descriptions and shortens them to fit the screen, so they are not in this list. The character counter explains how WordPico counts characters.
X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube are trademarks of their respective owners. WordPico is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them.