Instagram Character Counter

How does this Instagram character counter count?

It counts Instagram text in UTF-16 code units, the same unit Outfeed's publisher uses when it checks a caption before sending it to Instagram. Instagram does not publish how it counts, and UTF-16 is the conservative choice for emoji: an emoji never costs less here than it would under a count of what you see on screen.

Next to that number the tool shows the grapheme count, meaning what a reader sees as one character, measured with your browser's built-in text segmenter. The two agree for plain text and split apart on emoji. If your browser has no segmenter, the tool falls back to counting code points and tells you so. Words, sentences, emoji, hashtags, mentions and line breaks are counted alongside, so it doubles as an IG caption counter and an Instagram word counter in one box.

Which Instagram limits does this counter check?

Two, both with a number Instagram itself publishes. The caption allows 2,200 characters: that is the figure in Instagram's publishing API documentation, and Outfeed's publisher refuses an Instagram caption over 2,200 characters, counted in UTF-16 code units. The bio allows 150 characters, per Instagram Help. Instagram does not say how the bio is counted, so treat that limit as approximate when your bio contains emoji or styled letters.

Short on ideas rather than space? The Instagram bio generator writes ready-to-paste bios with a live counter, and the TikTok bio generator does the same for TikTok profiles. If you post video too, our guide to how long a video can be on Instagram covers the length limits for Reels, Stories and feed video.

Do emojis count as two characters on Instagram?

Most emoji take 2 UTF-16 units, but not all, and Instagram publishes no counting method, so "an emoji counts as two" is a rule of thumb rather than a fact. Here is what common emoji cost in the unit this counter uses:

• A thumbs-up: 2 units, 1 grapheme.
• A red heart (heart plus an emoji-style selector): 2 units.
• A thumbs-up with a skin tone: 4 units.
• A country flag: 4 units.
• A family emoji, built from four people joined by invisible joiners: 11 units, still 1 grapheme.

In practice, a caption of nothing but plain thumbs-up emoji fills the 2,200 limit at 1,100 emoji. The counter lists every emoji in your text that costs more than 2 units, so you can see exactly where the space went.

Styled "fancy font" letters behave the same way: most bold and italic Unicode letters cost 2 units each, and screen readers often cannot read them. The tool flags them, and our Unicode text converter shows what each style costs before you paste it in.

Where does Instagram cut a caption with "more"?

Instagram does not publish it. The figure most counters quote comes from Meta's ads guide, which recommends 125 characters of primary text for feed and Story ads. That is advertising guidance, not a documented organic cut-off, and in practice the fold also depends on your line breaks and the reader's screen. The preview in the tool marks the 125-character point as ads guidance (you can switch it off) and tells you how long your first line is, because that is what people read before deciding to tap.

The only platform in this tool that publishes a visible-before-truncation figure is Pinterest: the first 40 characters of a Pin title may show in feeds, depending on the device. The Pin title field shows that marker inline.

Do hashtags, spaces and new lines count toward the limit?

Yes. Every hashtag, space and line break is text, so each one counts as characters toward the caption limit. The tool shows your count with and without hashtags so you can see what they are costing. How many hashtags Instagram allows on a post is a separate rule from the character count, and it has changed; our Instagram hashtag limit guide has the current number.

Line breaks count as one character each (a Windows-style break is normalised to one). If Instagram is collapsing your spacing, the Instagram line break generator keeps paragraph gaps intact when you paste.

What are the limits on TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Threads and Bluesky?

The same text field character counter covers every field below. Each platform counts in its own unit: Bluesky counts graphemes, so any emoji is 1; YouTube caps descriptions in UTF-8 bytes, where a plain emoji costs 4; the rest are counted in UTF-16 units.

"Platform docs" means the platform's own help or API documentation. "Widely reported" means the platform does not publish the figure. Enforced by Outfeed's publishing code: the Facebook Page post limit of 63,206 is the one Outfeed enforces, not a figure Meta publishes. TikTok's 2,200 is the API caption limit schedulers publish through; the in-app limit is reported to be higher but TikTok does not state it. TikTok publishes no bio limit and reports vary. Outfeed's publisher currently refuses a Pinterest description over 500 characters — stricter than Pinterest's 800. Limits last verified 2026-09-27.

Three fields have their own deep dives. For LinkedIn, including the see-more cut-off on posts, see our LinkedIn post character limit guide. For YouTube titles (100 characters, with no < or > allowed), the YouTube title checker scores a title for length and click appeal. Bluesky's 300-grapheme post limit is the one place an emoji really is one character. The YouTube description cap is 5,000 bytes, so a description full of accented or non-Latin text runs out well before 5,000 characters.

Writing for X? It weights links, emoji and CJK text differently from all of these, so it has its own Twitter character counter. For image and video dimensions on every platform, see the social media image sizes guide.

Write it once, fit it everywhere

Checking one caption against eight platforms by hand is where a scheduler earns its keep. Outfeed AI is a chat-first AI social media manager: you describe the post, it writes it in your brand voice, shows a preview for each platform and publishes to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, Pinterest and Bluesky. Its publisher applies most of these limits in code before anything is sent, counting Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Threads text in UTF-16 units and Bluesky text in graphemes, as this tool does. Some fields it truncates rather than refuses, such as TikTok captions and YouTube descriptions, and its Pinterest description cap is currently lower than Pinterest's own.