Every platform cuts your text off somewhere. X/Twitter stops you at 280 characters, Google truncates your meta description around 160, and Instagram folds your caption after the first couple of lines. Writing to a limit without checking it is a guessing game — this cheat sheet has the real numbers, and a free character counter tool below handles the counting for you.
Character limits by platform (2026)
- X / Twitter post: 280 characters (URLs and media count as 23 characters regardless of actual length)
- Instagram caption: 2,200 characters max, but only the first ~125 characters show before “…more” — put your hook there
- Facebook post: 63,206 characters max, but engagement drops sharply past ~80 characters
- LinkedIn post: 3,000 characters max, with a “see more” cutoff around 210
- TikTok caption: 2,200 characters
- Google Ads headline: 30 characters per headline
- SEO title tag: ~50–60 characters before Google truncates it in search results
- Meta description: ~150–160 characters before truncation
- SMS / text message: 160 characters per segment (longer messages split and may be billed as multiple texts)
- YouTube video title: 100 characters max, but only ~60–70 show in search results
Why “character count” and “word count” aren’t the same problem
A word counter tells you how much you’ve written. A character counter tells you whether it will actually fit. The two diverge fast — a 40-word sentence full of short words might be 180 characters, well under an SMS limit, while a 40-word sentence full of long words can blow past 280 characters on X. If a platform enforces a character limit, count characters, not words.
Spaces matter too. Most tools (including ToolNixy’s character counter) show both counts side by side — “with spaces” is what platforms actually enforce, “without spaces” is more useful for comparing raw content length.
How to check your character count
- Paste or type your text into a character counter.
- Check the count against the limit for wherever you’re posting (use the table above).
- If you’re over, trim filler words first — “in order to” → “to”, “at this point in time” → “now” — before cutting substance.
- For meta titles and descriptions specifically, front-load the keyword and value proposition in the first 60 characters, since that’s what shows on mobile search results even when the rest doesn’t get cut.
Quick tips for tight limits
- Cut qualifiers first: “really,” “very,” “basically,” and “just” rarely change the meaning of a sentence.
- Use numerals: “5” is 1 character, “five” is 4.
- Swap long connectors for punctuation: an em dash or colon often replaces “which means that” or “in addition to this.”
- Write the headline last: it’s easier to compress a sentence you’ve already drafted in full than to write a tight one from scratch.
All of this is faster with a live counter running as you type instead of checking after the fact. ToolNixy’s character counter updates character, word, sentence, and paragraph counts instantly, runs entirely in your browser, and never uploads or stores what you type.
Related Guides
More on writing tight, platform-ready text: