Character limits for each social network
When scheduling posts, it's good to keep in mind that each social network has its own character limits in place. The table below outlines the character limit for each social channel.
| Channel | Character limit |
| Facebook pages & groups | 5,000 |
| Instagram profiles | 2,200 |
| X/Twitter profiles | 280 |
| LinkedIn pages & profiles | 3,000 |
| Pinterest boards | 500 |
| TikTok Business accounts | 2,200 |
| Start Pages | 5,000 |
| Mastodon accounts | 500 |
| YouTube Shorts | 5,000 |
📝 Notes
- Images can also take up character space in your post. If the character count goes down when you add an image (as it does for X/Twitter and LinkedIn), this is a social network that factors images into your character count allotment.
- Due to API limitations, the increased character limit for X Premium/Twitter Blue subscribers would only apply to posts published natively on X/Twitter.
- When mentioning users on Mastodon (e.g. @jane@exampleserver.com), only the username (e.g. "jane") will count against your character limit – the domain is not counted (e.g. @exampleserver.com).
It's possible that when posting natively, the character limit is higher. That is because some of the limits imposed by a social network's API* are stricter than those imposed on the native platform.
*What is an API? It's the access that one application (in this case, a social network) gives to another application (in this case, Buffer or any other third-party).