Paste your caption and watch it check against the limit on ten platforms at once. Catch the post that is too long before it gets cut off in the feed.
Short answer: This free social media character counter checks your caption live against every major platform limit, X at 280, Bluesky at 300, Threads at 500, Instagram and TikTok at 2,200, LinkedIn at 3,000 and more. No login, no signup, and every count runs in your browser.
Counts run entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Each social network sets its own caption or post limit, and they are not close to one another. Writing to X’s 280-character habit wastes the room you have on Instagram, while reusing an Instagram caption can get cut off on X. The table below lists the public caption limits the counter above checks against, so you can write once and trim per platform with confidence.
| Platform | Character limit | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) | 280 characters | Post body. Premium accounts allow much longer. |
| Bluesky | 300 graphemes | Counts graphemes, not bytes. |
| Threads | 500 characters | Per post in a thread. |
| Mastodon | 500 characters | Default. Some instances allow more. |
| 2,200 characters | Caption. About 30 hashtags max. | |
| TikTok | 2,200 characters | Video caption. |
| 3,000 characters | Post body. Truncates at the fold (about 140 characters). | |
| YouTube | 5,000 characters | Video description. |
| 500 characters | Pin description. | |
| 63,206 characters | Generous limit, but shorter posts perform better. |
Limits are the widely-published public caption and post limits as of 2026. Platforms tweak them over time, so treat them as a reliable guide rather than a permanent guarantee.
Paste or type your caption into the box at the top of this page. The counter shows your total characters, words and lines, then a live meter for each platform that turns red the moment your caption goes over that platform’s limit. There is nothing to install and no account to create.
When you are ready to publish, you can write once and tailor per platform without counting by hand. See the full list of supported networks on the platforms page, browse the other free tools like the best time to post calculator and the hashtag generator, or start a free 7-day trial to schedule the post for real.
Yes. The PostDodo character counter is completely free with no login or signup. You paste a caption and it counts live against every platform limit. The counting runs entirely in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere.
X caps a standard post at 280 characters on free accounts. X Premium subscribers can post much longer. The counter above flags the moment a caption crosses 280 so you can trim before posting.
Instagram allows up to 2,200 characters in a caption and a maximum of around 30 hashtags. Only the first 125 characters or so show before the More link, so front-load the important words even though you have room.
Often, yes. Many emojis are made of multiple code points, so a single emoji can count as two or more characters on some platforms. This counter counts by Unicode code points, which matches how most platforms describe their limits more closely than a plain length count.
Hashtags count as normal text, every character including the hash symbol. Links also count toward most platform limits as plain characters, so a long URL eats into your caption space. Shorten links or move them where the platform allows.
Write once, tailor per platform, schedule the lot, and get a confirmed receipt that it actually went out. Start free for 7 days.
Start free for 7 days →