What is the character limit on X (Twitter)?
Short answer
280 characters for a standard account, and up to 25,000 for X Premium subscribers. X doesn’t count every character alike: letters, digits and most punctuation count 1; an emoji, and each Chinese, Japanese or Korean character, count 2; and every link counts 23, however long it is, because X shortens it. Attached photos and videos count nothing.
How X counts, from its own documentation
From X’s developer documentation on counting characters, read on 1 October 2026:
| What you type | Counts as |
|---|---|
| A letter, digit, space or common punctuation mark | 1 |
| An emoji, including skin tones and joined emoji | 2 |
| A Chinese, Japanese or Korean character | 2 |
| Any link | 23, whatever its length |
| An attached photo, GIF or video | 0 |
X normalises text before counting, so an accented letter counts once however it was typed.
X Premium
Subscribers can write longer posts: “up to 25,000 characters”, per X’s Premium page. X’s own How to Post page still says 4,000 for a longer post, so X’s two pages disagree; try a long post before you rely on the higher figure. Accounts without Premium stay at 280.
Counting a post before you send it
The free character counter applies X’s weights, links and emoji included, next to every other network’s limit. Two things catch people out: a long link that looks like it breaks the limit but counts 23, and a short post full of emoji that counts double.
Posting the same words to X and elsewhere
X’s 280 is the shortest limit of the big networks, so a caption written for Instagram or LinkedIn rarely fits. Mellow Hub lets X have its own caption in the same post and checks it before anything is sent. Hub checks X at 280 characters counting every character, links included, which is stricter than X for posts with long links: shorten a link, or give X its own caption. Hub can’t see whether an account has Premium, so it reports anything longer rather than sending it.
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 X character limit 280 or 25,000?
280 for a standard account. Longer posts need X Premium, which X’s Premium page puts at up to 25,000 characters.
Do links count toward the X character limit?
Yes, as 23 characters each, whatever their real length, because X replaces every link with a shortened one.
Do emoji count as two characters on X?
Yes. X gives every emoji a weight of 2, including emoji with skin tones and joined ones, which are still counted once as 2.
Do photos or videos count toward the limit?
No. Attached media counts as zero; only the text and its links are counted.
Sources
Other companies’ features change. Every statement about them rests on these pages, as they read on the date above.