Instagram and Twitter Character Counter Tool
Have you ever composed the perfect Tweet or Instagram caption and are blocked because the post is over the character limit? What is going on…the character count seems fine?!? Just how many characters are allowed?
In this article, find out how you can calculate the exact weighted length using a character counter tool so you never go over the Instagram caption limit or Twitter’s character limits.
How Instagram and Twitter Determine the Character Count
Most social networks impose limits on how many characters (letters, emojis 🦄) you can use per post. Word count is ignored, but spaces do count as characters.
Twitter has a character limit of 280 and Instagram has a character limit of 2,200.1 However, both of these social media platforms have their own way of determining the number of characters that count towards the limit.
Consider the following social media post with 76 characters (remember, spaces count):
Depuis que j’ai commencé à me former pour développer 🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩 ↔️ ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
While the sentence is only 76 characters, the Twitter character length is 83 and the Instagram character length is 73. Both Twitter and Instagram give different weights2 to special characters, such as “à”, and emojis . For example, 🍩 has a different weight than ↔️.
It is easy to go over Twitter’s character limit, given only 280 characters are allowed. Even an Instagram posts can hit the limit of 2,200 if you’re sharing long-form content and using special characters or emojis.
How to Check Social Media Character Limits
There are several popular tools to check Twitter, but all of these tools are inaccurate for Instagram, they simply give the Twitter weighted length. Instagram uses a different algorithm to calculate the maximum number of characters allowed, so replying upon the Twitter number will either underutilize the available length or have your post rejected.
The best way to check the above text is to use our Twitter and Instagram Character Counter Tool.
The character counter tool will let you know the exact count and if your social media posts are valid for posting. You can add regular text, special unicode characters, and emojis.
Social Media API for Character Counting
If you rather use an API to check the weighted character count, such as from your app or platform, try the Check Char Length endpoint. It gives you an easy way to make an API call and find the character count as interpreted by the social networks and if the post is valid. Just POST your text and get back the response:
{
"twitterWeightedLength": 4398,
"instagramWeightedLength": 2199,
"twitterValid": false,
"instagramValid": true
}With this you’ll be able to ensure all your posts are successful.
For more info on social media APIs.
1Instagram captions limit is 2,200. The Instagram bio character limit is 150 characters. The Instagram username character limit is 30. Facebook character limits are 63,206.
2Twitter or Instagram assign weighted values to a particular character. For example, the character “y” might count as 1, but the emoji ↔️counts as 2. This is often, but not always due to how many unicodes are used.
