Instagram character counter

Meta’s own help pages (help.instagram.com, facebook.com/help) come back empty when a script fetches them, but they load in a browser, so we read them there. On 7 October 2026 we opened these Meta pages and read the figures on them:

Two cautions. The developer pages describe what the API accepts when an app publishes a post or sends a message, and the app itself may allow something different. And the Ads Guide figures are recommendations for one ad format, not hard caps.

The username (30), comments (2,200) and a Facebook post (63,206) are the figures usually quoted. We searched Instagram’s Help Center and the Facebook Help Centre on 7 October 2026 and found no article that states them, so the counter marks them “Not confirmed” and lets you edit the number. Treat them as a good guide, and check the count in the app before relying on it.

For usernames, the format rule is separate from the length: letters, numbers, full stops and underscores, with no two full stops in a row and no full stop at the start or end.

Instagram’s own Help Center article, “Use hashtags on Instagram”, says: “You can use up to 5 tags on a post. If you include more than 5 tags on a single photo/video, your comment won’t post.” A Social Samosa report dated 19 December 2025 says Instagram is gradually limiting posts and Reels to five hashtags, and quotes Instagram: “We find that using fewer (up to 5) more targeted hashtags, rather than many generic ones, can improve both your content’s performance and people’s experience on Instagram.” Meta’s API reference, updated 28 September 2026, still says a published caption can hold “30 hashtags”.

So the counter shows both numbers side by side. We can’t say why the API reference still lists 30. For what you type in the app, five is the figure Instagram’s help article gives, and if you use five or fewer you are inside both. The same article says hashtags can go in the caption or in comments, that numbers are allowed in a hashtag, and that spaces and special characters such as $ or % won’t work.

The main count follows what you see on screen: one emoji, one flag or one accented letter counts as one character, even though a computer may store it as several. Meta’s pages say “characters” without defining that. So the tool also shows UTF-16 units (how JavaScript counts) and UTF-8 bytes (what the DM limit uses). If a caption is close to 2,200 and heavy with emoji, trust the lower margin.

Tip: Keep your most important words in the first line or two. Instagram shows only the start of a long caption before “more”.