Instagram Character Limits

If you’re like most brands, you may have never even thought of character limits on Instagram. After all, if you read through captions of the top brands, you’ll notice they tend to run on the shorter side.

However, you don’t have an unlimited number of characters at your disposal. Let’s take a look at the ideal character lengths on Instagram.

Ideal Length of Instagram Captions: 138-150 Characters

If you want to maximize engagement on your Instagram posts, stick to 138-150 characters in your captions. While the star of your posts will be the photos and videos, captions provide context and can compel people to engage with you. So you want to do everything you can to make your captions as great as possible.

Ideal Length of Instagram Ads Captions: 125 Characters

Facebook recommends capping your captions for Instagram Ads at 125 characters. That’s enough so that the text doesn’t get truncated, and shows up fully on smaller screen sizes.

Ideal Number of Hashtags for Instagram Captions: 5-10

Hashtags are one of the best ways to get your posts seen and grow your audience. Marketers are aware of this and sometimes resort to stuffing 20+ hashtags into a single post in hopes of getting more visibility.

However, filling your captions with as many hashtags as possible doesn’t guarantee results. In fact, it may even backfire by getting your account shadowbanned.

Shadowbanning is when posts from your account stop showing up in searches for specific hashtags on Instagram. It can happen for a few reasons, but one of the most common is overusing the same hashtag in multiple posts.

So if you’re using the same 20+ hashtags in all your captions, you’re potentially putting your content’s visibility at risk. Play it safe by sticking to the recommended range and varying up the hashtags you use.

In addition to exposing your brand to a shadowban, Track Maven found that engagement rates start to drop once you go beyond 10 hashtags as well. Which is just even more of a reason to stay within the recommended number of hashtags in an Instagram post.

Ideal Number of Characters in an Instagram Hashtag: 24 or less

Track Maven also looked at the ideal number of characters in an Instagram hashtag. According to their data, you should stick to hashtags less than 24 characters long. After that, engagement starts to drop significantly.

Instagram Maximum Character Lengths

Instagram captions can be longer than most marketers realize, but there is a limit. There’s also a limit to how many hashtags you can use. So before you rush off to cram your captions with 50 hashtags and your life story, take a look at Instagram’s maximum character limits:

• Instagram caption character limit: 2,200 characters
• Instagram hashtag limit: 30 hashtags
• Instagram bio character limit: 150 characters
• Instagram username character limit: 30 characters

Although you have up to 2,200 characters in your Instagram captions, it will get truncated after 125. So for longer captions, make sure your most important information appears first. Leave any @mentions or hashtags for the end, or even consider adding them as a comment to your post.

The maximum character length for captions in Instagram Ads is the same as a regular post—2,200 characters.