Character Limits for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Every Major Platform — 2026 Guide

Writing for social media means writing within constraints. Twitter gives you 280 characters. LinkedIn lets you write an essay. Neither means you should use the maximum. Understanding where text gets cut off on each platform helps you write posts that don't get truncated at an awkward moment.

Twitter/X: the 280-character limit

Twitter doubled its limit from 140 to 280 characters in 2017. But posts around 100 to 150 characters typically get better engagement rates than ones that use all 280. Shorter leaves room for quoted retweets. URLs on Twitter always count as 23 characters, regardless of how long the actual link is.

The "show more" cut-off on Twitter doesn't apply to short posts, so there's no truncation issue the way there is on LinkedIn. What matters more is keeping the hook in the first line, since that's what appears in feeds and in preview snippets.

LinkedIn: the visible cut-off point

LinkedIn posts can be up to 3,000 characters. But only the first 200 to 210 characters appear in the feed before a "see more" link truncates the rest. That first 200 characters is your hook. It needs to make someone want to read the full post.

Articles on LinkedIn (separate from posts) support up to 125,000 characters and don't have the same feed truncation issue, since they're always clicked through.

Instagram captions

Instagram allows up to 2,200 characters per caption. The feed shows roughly 125 characters before a "more" link. The first two lines of your caption need to earn the tap. Instagram bio fields allow only 150 characters, so every word there matters.

Quick reference

• Twitter/X post: 280 characters (URLs = 23 chars each)
• LinkedIn post (feed visible): ~200 characters before "see more"
• LinkedIn post (total): 3,000 characters
• Instagram caption (feed visible): ~125 characters
• Instagram caption (total): 2,200 characters
• Instagram bio: 150 characters
• Facebook post: 63,206 characters (not a real constraint)

Counting before you post

Paste your draft into the Word Counter tool to see the character count before you post. This is especially useful for Twitter where 280 characters fills faster than you expect, and for the LinkedIn hook where being 10 characters over the visible limit means your call-to-action stays hidden.