The Twitter Character Limit on X, Counted Properly

The Twitter character limit on X is 280 characters for standard accounts, but the count is weighted rather than literal: a URL counts as a fixed length however long it is, and characters in scripts such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean count as two. That is why a post can be rejected at what looks like 250 characters.

The URL rule is the useful one. Shortening a link before posting saves you nothing, because X substitutes its own wrapper and charges the same either way. Use the real URL, which is also more trustworthy to a reader.

The counter applies the weighting rather than counting keystrokes, and shows the same text against every other platform's limit at once.

Two reasons to aim well under 280.

Quoting. A post that someone can quote and add a line to travels further than one that fills the space. Leaving room is a distribution decision.

Reading. Short posts are read; long ones are skimmed. Empirically, the posts that travel furthest on X are considerably shorter than the limit.

If your point genuinely needs more space, that is a thread rather than a longer post — how to write a Twitter thread.

Premium accounts on X can post far longer text, which sounds like it removes the constraint. In practice it moves it: long posts are collapsed behind a "Show more" link in the timeline, so the first couple of lines are still doing the entire job.

That is the same structural problem as Instagram caption length and where LinkedIn puts See more — a fold rather than a cap, and folds are unforgiving in a scrolling feed.

Attachments are free. An image, a video, a poll or a quoted post costs no characters, which makes them the cheapest way to add substance to a post that is already full.

Images have their own constraint — the timeline crop, which is more aggressive than people expect:

See Twitter image sizes for X.

Links attached to a post also generate a card, built from the linked page rather than the post — Open Graph tags. X documents its card formats in its developer documentation.

Threads allows 500 characters and chains overflow into a second post rather than refusing it — the Threads character limit. Anyone crossposting should write to the tighter limit, which is X's; the full comparison is in how to post on X and Threads.

Count it the way X does, across every platform at once: character counter.