Character counter guide: the real limits for X posts, meta descriptions, SMS and Instagram

2026-10-26

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You paste a draft into a character counter, it says 279, and you post.

Then X cuts you off, or the text message arrives in three pieces. The counter was not wrong. The platform simply counts differently.

Quick limits: X posts 280, with Korean, Chinese and Japanese characters counting double and every link counting as 23.

Meta descriptions have no hard limit, but Google usually shows about 150 to 160 characters.

One SMS holds 160 plain characters, or only 70 once a single emoji appears. Instagram captions stop at 2,200.

The limits side by side

Character limits for X, meta descriptions, SMS and Instagram

▲ Four limits, four different ways of counting

X post: 280 characters on a standard account. Paid accounts can write much longer posts, but the timeline still folds them after the first 280
Meta description: Google sets no maximum. It trims the snippet by pixel width, which works out to roughly 150 to 160 characters on desktop and less on mobile
SMS: 160 characters for one plain message, 153 per part once it splits
Instagram caption: 2,200 characters, with a fold after the first couple of lines. Bios stop at 150
LinkedIn post: 3,000 characters, folded after about 200

Every one of these counts spaces. If a tool shows "characters" and "characters without spaces," use the first number.

Why does X say my 270 characters are too long?

X weighs characters. Plain Latin letters, numbers and most punctuation count as one. Characters from Chinese, Japanese and Korean count as two each, and most emoji count as two as well.

So a post in Korean hits the wall at about 140 characters, not 280. A Korean user writing 200 characters sees the limit long before an English counter would warn them.

Links are the other surprise. Every URL counts as 23 characters, whether it is a short link or a 120-character tracking address.

A short link saves you nothing, and a long one costs you nothing extra.

A plain character counter shows 23 characters for "https://example.com/abc" and 120 for a long link. X counts both as 23. Trim your draft against X's own box before the last edit.

Why did my text message split into three?

SMS has two alphabets. The basic one, called GSM-7, covers English letters, digits and common symbols, and fits 160 characters into one message.

Add a single emoji, a curly quote pasted from a word processor, or a Korean character, and the whole message switches to Unicode. Unicode SMS holds only 70 characters per message.

How one emoji changes the number of SMS parts

▲ The same 150 characters can be one message or three

Here is a 150-character reminder, sent two ways:

Plain text only: 150 is under 160, so it goes as one message
Same text with one smiley at the end: now each part holds 67 characters once split, so 151 characters become 3 parts

Many business texting plans bill per part, so that smiley tripled the cost. Straight quotes instead of curly ones and no emoji keep you in the cheaper alphabet.

Counting fast before you post

ZAGO.TO has a free word counter that counts characters with and without spaces, words, sentences and UTF-8 bytes as you type.

One of its goal buttons is set to 280 characters, so you can watch the number while you write a post.

Checking a caption length on a laptop before posting

▲ Draft in one place, check the count, then paste

Drafts autosave in that browser and nothing is uploaded while you count. Two things it does not do:

It counts every character as one, so it does not apply X's double weight for Korean, Chinese or Japanese, or the fixed 23 for links
It does not tell you whether an SMS will switch to Unicode or how many parts it will take

For what "word" means to different counters, see Word counter: what counts as a word, and why tools disagree.

The short version

Count with spaces, keep meta descriptions near 155, keep emoji out of SMS you pay for, and for X remember that Korean characters and emoji count double and every link is 23.

Check your next caption in the Word Counter on ZAGO.TO before you post.

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