Twitter (X) character limits for posts, bios, DMs, and display names. Free accounts get 280 characters per post; Premium gets 25,000. Full breakdown inside.
Published: April 2026 | Last Updated: April 2026
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Twitter / X posts are limited to 280 characters on free accounts. Premium subscribers get up to 25,000 characters per post.
| Field | Character Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Post (Free) | 280 | Standard post limit for free accounts |
| Post (Premium) | 25,000 | Extended limit for X Premium subscribers |
| Display Name | 50 | Your visible name shown above your handle |
| Username / Handle | 15 | Your @username (letters, numbers, underscores only) |
| Bio | 160 | Profile description shown under your name |
| Direct Message | 10,000 | Per individual DM |
| List Name | 25 | Name of a curated list |
| List Description | 100 | Description for curated lists |
Twitter launched in 2006 with a 140-character limit inspired by SMS text messages. In 2017, the limit doubled to 280 characters for most languages. The constraint forces concise communication — which became Twitter's defining feature. When Elon Musk acquired the platform (now X), Premium subscribers gained access to much longer posts, but the 280-character free tier remains the standard most users work within.
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Open Word CounterWhat is the Twitter / X character limit?
Twitter (X) allows 280 characters per post on free accounts. X Premium subscribers can post up to 25,000 characters.
Do links count towards Twitter's character limit?
Yes. Every URL in a tweet uses 23 characters, regardless of the actual link length. Twitter wraps all links through its t.co shortener.
What is the Twitter bio character limit?
Twitter bios are limited to 160 characters. This is the description shown on your profile page below your display name.
Can you go over 280 characters on Twitter?
Only if you have an X Premium subscription, which extends the post limit to 25,000 characters. Free accounts are capped at 280.
Do hashtags count towards Twitter's character limit?
Yes, hashtags count as regular characters including the # symbol. A hashtag like #writing uses 8 of your 280 characters.
The sources and check dates in this table come from one versioned data file — the place we record every check we make. The rest of this page, and the limits built into our tools, are still separate copies, so when we correct a figure we correct it in each place. This table is how we keep ourselves honest while we do.
Some figures on this page have been checked against the platform's own documentation — those show a source and the date we checked. The rest came across from our older pages and haven't been checked yet, so they say so. We'd rather show you which is which than print a date we haven't earned.
Still to be checked against: X Help Center (help.x.com) — "Counting characters" and the X Premium features page
| Field | Limit | Notes | Source | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Post (Free) | 280 | Standard post limit for free accounts | https://docs.x.com/fundamentals/counting-characters | 2026-09-19 |
| Post (Premium) | 25,000 | Extended limit for X Premium subscribers. VERIFIED 2026-09-19: X's own Help Center confirms 25,000 is the current figure for paid tiers ("longer posts" up to 25,000 characters). The competing 4,000 figure was accurate at the February 2023 launch of long-form posts and was later raised — a superseded historical value, not a live contradiction. | https://help.x.com/en/using-x/x-premium | 2026-09-19 |
| Display Name | 50 | Your visible name shown above your handle | https://help.x.com/en/managing-your-account/x-username-rules | 2026-09-19 |
| Username / Handle | 15 | Your @username (letters, numbers, underscores only) | https://help.x.com/en/managing-your-account/x-username-rules | 2026-09-19 |
| Bio | 160 | Profile description shown under your name | https://help.x.com/en/resources/glossary | 2026-09-19 |
| Direct Message | 10,000 | Per individual DM. Could not confirm 10,000 against any official X Help Center or developer.x.com/docs.x.com page reached in this pass (checked X's Direct Messages help page and the DM-create API spec — no maxLength figure published for the message body). Left unverified rather than asserting a source that was not actually found. | No source recorded | Not yet verified against the platform’s own documentation |
| List Name | 25 | Name of a curated list | https://help.x.com/en/using-x/x-lists | 2026-09-19 |
| List Description | 100 | Description for curated lists. Not stated numerically on the consumer Help Centre page; confirmed instead via the official X API v2 OpenAPI schema. | https://docs.x.com/x-api/lists/create-list | 2026-09-19 |
Most counters on this site measure UTF-16 code units — the unit JavaScript uses when you ask a piece of text how long it is. The exception is X: our Twitter counter and the X row of our social media counter follow X's own published counting rules, so Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters and emoji count as two each, and every link counts as 23. UTF-16 matches what many platforms do, and it doesn't match what all of them do.