Instagram caption and bio character limits

Instagram's limits are generous for captions and tight for bios. The more important limit is the invisible one: in the feed, only the first line or two of a caption shows before it is cut off with “more”. Most people never tap it.

The limits

Spaces, line breaks, emoji and hashtags all count. Instagram changes its limits from time to time, so if a draft is rejected, check the app.

Check a caption before posting

1. Write the caption somewhere comfortable and paste it into the Character Counter. It compares the text with the 2,200-character Instagram caption limit.
2. Look at the first 125 characters or so on their own. That is roughly what shows before “more”, depending on the screen.
3. For a bio, keep it under 150 including spaces and emoji.

Write the visible part first

• Put the hook, question or key fact in the first sentence.
• Do not open with hashtags, mentions or a long emoji row; they waste the visible space.
• Put calls to action early if they matter, such as “Sale ends Sunday”.
• Detail, story and hashtags can follow after the cut.

Line breaks that stay put

Breaking a caption into short paragraphs makes it easier to read. Line breaks typed in the app usually survive, but spaces at the end of a line or invisible characters copied from notes apps can cause odd gaps or lost breaks. If your caption collapses into one block, clean it in the Text Cleaner to trim trailing spaces and remove invisible characters, then paste it again.

How long is 2,200 characters?

In English, 2,200 characters is roughly 350 to 400 words: a short blog post. Captions that long work for recipes, tutorials and stories, but they are read by few people. Draft long captions in the Word Counter, which shows the character count and reading time, and make sure the first line works even for someone who reads nothing else.

Bio in 150 characters

A good bio answers three questions: who you are, what people get by following, and what to do next. Example, at 101 characters: “Home baker in Leeds. Sourdough, simple recipes and the occasional disaster. New recipe every Friday ↓”. The link field is separate and does not use bio characters.

Fancy fonts

Bold and script-style “fonts” in bios are really special Unicode symbols. They often count as two characters each, cannot be found by search, and are read badly by screen readers. See the problems with Unicode bold text before using them.

For image sizes, see Instagram image sizes. For other platforms' limits, see the X character limit.