What is a character counter?
A character counter is a tool that counts every letter, number, space and symbol in a piece of text. This one also counts words and lines, estimates reading time, and checks the text against the limits of the places you post it, so you know before you hit publish whether it fits.
What are the character limits on social media?
LinkedIn allows 3,000 characters in a post, X allows 280, Bluesky 300 and an Instagram caption 2,200. What people see first is shorter: LinkedIn and Instagram fold long posts behind …more, so the first line or two does most of the work. Here are the numbers the counter checks.
| Where | Limit | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | About 210 show before …more |
| X post | 280 | Links count as 23. Premium allows 25,000 |
| Bluesky post | 300 | An emoji counts as one |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | About 125 show before …more |
| YouTube title | 100 | A hard cap |
| Google title | About 60 | Not a cap: Google cuts by width |
| Google description | About 160 | Not a cap: Google cuts by width |
How does X count characters?
X doesn't count every character as one. Each link counts as 23 characters, however long it is, and most emoji and Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters count as 2. Everything else counts as 1. The X bar in the counter uses these same rules, from X's own open-source counting library.
Why does the first line matter so much?
Because it's often all people see. A LinkedIn post shows about 210 characters before it folds, and in a busy feed people decide in a second whether to tap …more. Put the point of the post in that first line, not the background.
To test an opening, try the free post checker, or get three new ones from the hook generator. Postel writes the whole post in your voice and schedules it.