"Characters" is not one number
Three platforms publish their own counting rules, and the same post comes out a different length on each.
- X gives you 280, but weighs them. Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and Cyrillic letters cost 1, Chinese, Japanese and Korean cost 2, every emoji costs 2, and every web address costs 23, however long it is.
- Bluesky counts what you see as one character, up to 300 - and separately refuses a post past 3,000 bytes, which a post full of emoji can reach first.
- Mastodon also counts what you see, up to 500, with every web address at 23 and a mention of someone on another server counted without their server's name.
Everyone else publishes a number and no method, so the counter counts those the strict way, where an emoji is two.
If a row says it fits, it fits.
An example
Take 200 characters of text and a 100-character link to your new video.
X counts that as 223, because the link costs 23 however long it is.
The same post is 300 on Threads and Instagram, which count the address in full.
The limits, at a glance
- YouTube title: 100. X: 280. Bluesky: 300.
- Threads and Mastodon: 500. Discord: 2,000.
- Instagram caption: 2,200. LinkedIn: 3,000.
- Telegram message: 4,096. YouTube description: 5,000.