Character & Image Limits 2026: X, Threads, Instagram, Bluesky

Every number below is a lookup, not an essay. Find your platform, take the number, go post.

The short answer, if you only want the extremes: Bluesky is the tightest text limit at 300 characters, X free is next at 280 for a different reason (it's a paywall, not a design choice), and Threads sits at 500. At the other end, Facebook allows 63,206 characters and any paid X tier allows 25,000 — neither of which anyone should use in full.

Last checked: 31 August 2026. Where a platform publishes its own spec page, that is the source linked. A few numbers — noted inline — come only from consistent third-party trackers because the platform doesn't document them publicly.

Every Platform at a Glance

Platform	Post limit	Bio	Images per post	Video max	Key gotcha
Threads	500 chars	150 chars	20	5 min	Free 10,000-char text attachment
X (free)	280 chars	160 chars	4	140 seconds	URLs always count as 23 chars
X (paid)	25,000 chars	160 chars	4	4 hours	Only the first 280 show in the timeline
Bluesky	300 chars	256 chars	4	10 min	Can't mix images and video in one post
Instagram	2,200 chars	150 chars	20	20 min (Reels)	Caption folds at 125 chars
LinkedIn	3,000 chars	220 (headline)	20	15 min	Folds at ~140 chars on mobile
Facebook	63,206 chars	101 chars	no practical cap (album)	240 min	Shorter posts read better
TikTok	4,000 chars	80 chars	photo posts	10 min in-app	Comments capped at 150
YouTube	5,000 (description)	1,000 chars	—	12 hours	Only ~70 chars show in search
Pinterest	800 chars	160 chars	—	15 min	Title cuts off around 40 chars
WhatsApp	700 (text status)	139 (about)	—	60 sec (status)	Media captions get 1,024 chars

What Is the Threads Character Limit in 2026?

Threads: 500 characters per post. That cap applies to posts and replies alike, and it hasn't moved since launch. What changed is what sits underneath it: Threads text attachments, which hold up to 10,000 characters and cost nothing. Your main post still has to land inside 500 characters, but the attachment appears as an expandable block below it that readers open with a tap — so the 500-character limit is now a hook limit, not a length limit. On media, Threads matches Instagram: up to 20 photos or videos in a single carousel, announced by the Threads account itself, and you can mix stills and clips in the same one. Video runs to 5 minutes. One thing to watch: links and @mentions count at their full visible length on Threads, with no shortener trimming them to a flat cost the way X does, so a long URL can swallow a fifth of your post.

Threads quick specs

• Post and reply limit: 500 characters
• Text attachment: up to 10,000 characters, free, no subscription
• Bio: 150 characters
• Media per post: up to 20 photos or videos, mixed
• Best image size: 1080 x 1350px (4:5) or 1080 x 1920px (9:16)
• Video length: up to 5 minutes, vertical performs best

That combination — 500 free characters plus 10,000 more behind a tap — makes Threads the most generous text-first platform of 2026 for anyone not paying for a subscription. If you're new to the app, our guide on how to post on Threads walks through the composer, and what Threads allows you to post covers the content rules that bite before the character count does.

What Is the Character Limit on X in 2026?

X: 280 characters free, 25,000 on any paid tier. X is the only major platform where the limit is a purchase. Free accounts get 280. All three paid tiers — Basic at $3/month, Premium at $8/month, Premium+ at $40/month on the web — unlock the same 25,000-character ceiling, so long posts cost $3, not $8. What the higher tiers add is the checkmark, fewer ads and long-form Articles, not more characters. One catch worth knowing before you write 25,000 of them: only the first 280 render in the timeline, and everyone else has to tap "Show more." The hook still has to work inside 280 characters either way. The other X limits don't move with the price: the bio stays at 160 characters on every tier, the display name at 50, and images at 4 per post whether you pay or not.

X limits by tier (X Premium)

Feature	Free	Basic ($3/mo)	Premium ($8/mo)	Premium+ ($40/mo)
Post length	280 chars	25,000 chars	25,000 chars	25,000 chars
Long-form Articles	No	No	No	Yes
Bold/italic formatting	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit posts	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Blue checkmark	No	No	Yes	Yes

Image and video specs

• Images per post: 4 maximum
• Image file size: 5 MB (JPG/PNG), 15 MB (GIF)
• Best single-image dimensions: 1200 x 675px (16:9)
• Video length: 140 seconds free; up to 4 hours on a paid tier
• Video file size: 512 MB free; up to 16 GB paid, on web and iOS
• Android cap: 10 minutes regardless of subscription — post long video from desktop or iOS

How X counts characters

• URLs always count as 23 characters, whatever their real length. A 5-character link and a 200-character link both cost 23, because the t.co shortener wraps everything.
• Most emoji count as 2 characters. Flags and skin-tone variants cost more.
• Auto-filled @mentions at the start of a reply don't count. Mentions you type inside the text do.
• Images, GIFs and video cost zero characters.
• Spaces and line breaks each count as 1.

What Is the Bluesky Character Limit?

Bluesky: 300 characters per post. Bluesky counts graphemes rather than bytes, which means an emoji costs exactly one character — the only major platform where that's true, and a real difference if you write emoji-heavy posts. Media sits outside the count, as everywhere else. You get up to 4 images per post, around 1 MB each after the app's own compression, or one video up to 10 minutes; what you can't do is mix them, because a Bluesky post record holds either an image set or a video, never both. Video started at 60 seconds when it launched in September 2024 and was raised to 3 minutes in March 2025, then to 10 minutes and 300 MB in August 2026. Links count at their full visible length here too, so a bare URL can cost a sixth of a 300-character post, and there is no paid tier that lifts the 300 — Bluesky sells nothing that buys you more characters.

Bluesky quick specs

• Post limit: 300 characters (graphemes — one emoji, one character)
• Bio: 256 characters
• Images per post: 4, jpeg/png/gif/webp, around 1 MB each — the app re-compresses larger files to fit
• Video: one per post, up to 10 minutes, 300 MB, MP4
• Mixing: images and video can't share a post

What Are Instagram's Character and Image Limits?

Instagram: 2,200-character captions, folding at 125. Those first 125 characters are the whole game — everything after them hides behind "more," and most people never tap it. Hashtags count toward the 2,200, so a 30-hashtag block eats real caption budget. Carousels now take up to 20 photos or videos, with each video slide capped at 60 seconds. Reels accept uploads up to 20 minutes, though recording inside the Reels camera stops at 3 minutes and short clips still travel furthest. And the number people search for most: an Instagram Note is 60 characters, one at a time, gone after 24 hours. The bio, at 150 characters, is the one Instagram field where the fold is generous rather than brutal, which is why the link and the pitch belong there rather than in a caption nobody expands.

Instagram quick specs

• Caption: 2,200 characters, 125 before the fold
• Notes: 60 characters, expire after 24 hours
• Bio: 150 characters
• Hashtags: 30 maximum per post
• Carousel: up to 20 photos or videos; video slides 60 seconds each
• Reels: up to 20 minutes uploaded, 3 minutes recorded in-app
• Stories: 60 seconds per segment
• Best feed image size: 1080 x 1350px (4:5)

What Are LinkedIn's Character Limits?

LinkedIn: 3,000 characters, but the real limit is ~140. That's where the "See more" fold lands on mobile (around 210 on desktop), and mobile is where most of the reading happens. Everything below it is opt-in. The 3,000-character ceiling has held steady through 2026, and long posts still work — they just have to earn the click first. Two other fields matter more than the post limit: comments stop at 1,250 characters, and a connection request note gets 300 — the shortest and most consequential box on the platform, because it is often the only text someone reads before deciding. Document carousels can run to 300 pages, though almost nothing gains from more than a dozen slides. Video is the other place the numbers split by device: 15 minutes uploaded from desktop against 10 from mobile, up to a 5 GB file either way.

Field	Limit
Post	3,000 chars
Comment	1,250 chars
Headline	220 chars
About/Summary	2,600 chars
Connection request note	300 chars
Direct message	8,000 chars
Poll question / option	140 / 30 chars
Images per post	up to 20 (carousel)
Document carousel	PDF/PPT/DOC, up to 300 pages, 100 MB
Video	15 min desktop, 10 min mobile, 5 GB

Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and WhatsApp

The short version: Facebook 63,206 characters, TikTok 2,200–4,000, YouTube 5,000 in the description, Pinterest 800, WhatsApp 700 in a text status. These five are where the published numbers get least consistent, so treat the ranges as ranges. TikTok is the clearest example — the in-app composer takes 4,000 characters while its Direct Post API still caps a title at 2,200, so the right number depends on how the post is published. YouTube's ceiling is the one that surprises people: 12 hours or 256 GB, whichever comes first, but only after you verify your account. Unverified channels stop at 15 minutes. Pinterest is the opposite problem: its titles allow 100 characters but show roughly the first 40 in a feed, and its descriptions run to 800 characters that are read by the ranking system rather than by people.

Facebook

• Post: 63,206 characters
• Comment: 8,000 characters
• Bio: 101 characters
• Ad headline / primary text: 40 / 125 characters

TikTok

• Caption: 4,000 characters in-app; the Direct Post API still caps titles at 2,200
• Comments: 150 characters
• Bio: 80 characters · Username: 24 characters
• Video: 10 minutes recorded in-app; 60-minute web uploads exist but remain limited to some accounts and markets

YouTube

• Title: 100 characters, ~70 visible in search (YouTube Help)
• Description: 5,000 characters
• Comments: 10,000 characters
• Upload ceiling: 256 GB or 12 hours, whichever is less — 15 minutes until you verify your account

Pinterest

• Pin title: up to 100 characters, roughly the first 40 visible in feeds
• Pin description: up to 800 characters (Pinterest specs)
• Video: 4 seconds to 15 minutes
• Image: 2:3 ratio, 1000 x 1500px, up to 20 MB

WhatsApp

• Text status: 700 characters
• Photo or video caption: 1,024 characters
• About: 139 characters

WhatsApp publishes none of these, and neither Facebook's 63,206-character ceiling nor TikTok's in-app caption cap appears on an official spec page — all three come from consistent third-party testing, so verify before you build anything around them.

How Do You Get Around a Character Limit?

Three ways, in descending order of how well they work. First, chain posts: on X you reply to yourself and keep going, each link getting its own 280 characters, and threads are native enough that individual posts still get liked and reposted on their own. Second, use the platform's own long-form escape hatch — Threads text attachments (10,000 characters, free) or an X paid tier (25,000). Third, and worst, screenshot your text and post it as an image. That bypasses every limit but kills accessibility for screen-reader users and makes the content unsearchable, so keep it for the rare case. Which one you reach for depends on the platform: Threads makes the escape hatch free, X charges $3 a month for it, and Bluesky offers none at all, which is why chaining is still the default there.

If you're chaining posts, four things help:

1. Write the full text first, then break it. Writing post-by-post loses the thread of the argument.
2. Make each post stand alone. Any one of them can surface on its own.
3. Spend the first post entirely on the hook. Nobody reads post 4 without it.
4. Put the best line last. The people who got there are the ones worth rewarding.

Two more habits worth building. Whitespace counts everywhere — every line break in a spaced-out post costs a character. And front-load regardless of platform: Instagram folds at 125, LinkedIn at ~140, X shows 280 of a 25,000-character post. The fold, not the limit, is what you're actually writing to.

Stop Counting Characters by Hand

Keeping eleven sets of limits in your head while writing is a bad use of a brain. Postory writes and adapts your post for each platform, then schedules it across X, Threads and Bluesky from one place — and post management keeps every draft and published post in one library so you can see what actually shipped where.

Try Postory free — write once, publish to X, Threads and Bluesky without re-counting characters for each one.