How many hashtags can you use on Instagram?

Short answer

Up to 5 per post or reel. Instagram cut the limit from 30 to 5 in December 2025, and its Help Center now says that a caption or comment with more than 5 won’t post. Hashtags still put a public post on each tag’s page; they are a label for what the post is about, so pick the 5 most specific ones.

Written by the Mellow team · Updated October 1, 2026, sources read October 1, 2026

What Instagram says

Help Center: “You can use up to 5 tags on a post.” With more than 5 on a single photo or video, the caption or comment won’t post (Instagram Help, read on 1 October 2026).
Announcement: Instagram’s @creators account announced in December 2025 that Instagram would allow up to 5 hashtags in a reel or post, starting that day (the post on Threads).
What hashtags do: a public account’s post appears on the page of each hashtag it uses; a private account’s posts don’t. Numbers work in a hashtag; spaces and symbols such as $ or % don’t.

Choosing five

Describe the post, not the audience. A specific tag, such as the technique, the place or the product, tells Instagram what the post is about. Broad tags like #explore or #reels describe nothing.
Mix one or two niche tags with one or two larger ones that your post can plausibly appear among.
Put them in the caption. The Help Center counts tags in comments too, so moving thirty tags to the first comment no longer works.
Let the caption do the rest. A first line that says plainly what the post is does more for a reader than a wall of tags did.

Posting through an app or a scheduler

Instagram’s API reference, updated in September 2026, still lists 30 hashtags as the limit for a caption (Meta for Developers), and Instagram hasn’t said whether a post with more than 5 is refused when an app sends it. Keep to 5 either way: the Help Center’s rule is the one people see applied.

Mellow Hub publishes to Instagram through its official API, with a caption of up to 2,200 characters, and does not count hashtags itself yet. Write 5 or fewer.

Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo). One publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five. There are no automatic overage charges.

Questions people also ask

Is the Instagram hashtag limit 30 or 5?

5. Instagram lowered it from 30 to 5 in December 2025, and its Help Center now says a post with more than 5 won’t go through. Older guides still say 30.

Do hashtags in the first comment count?

Yes. Instagram’s Help Center applies the limit of 5 to hashtags in comments as well as captions, so moving extra tags into a comment doesn’t get around it.

Do hashtags still help on Instagram?

They put a public post on the page of each tag it uses and label what the post is about. Instagram hasn’t published how much they count for next to everything else about a post, so treat them as labels, not a growth tactic.

Can I use the same five hashtags on every post?

Nothing stops you, but a tag should describe the post it is on. The same five on unrelated posts describe nothing.

Sources

Other companies’ features change. Every statement about them rests on these pages, as they read on the date above.