2026-07-02
Every YouTube character limit in one place — titles, descriptions, tags, channel bios, Shorts, community posts and comments — plus where each field visibly truncates.
YouTube enforces a different limit on almost every text field, and the hard limit is rarely the number that matters. What matters is where the text visibly truncates, because that is the point at which viewers stop reading. The table below lists the hard maximum YouTube will accept, alongside the approximate point where the field gets cut off in the interface.
| Field | Hard limit | Visible before truncation |
|---|---|---|
| Video title | 100 characters | ~60–70 in search results |
| Video description | 5,000 characters | ~157 (about 3 lines) |
| Tags (combined) | 500 characters total | Not shown to viewers |
| Channel name | 100 characters | Varies by placement |
| Channel description (About) | 1,000 characters | ~100 in the sidebar |
| Handle (@name) | 3–30 characters | Fully shown |
| Playlist title | 150 characters | ~50 in grid view |
| Playlist description | 5,000 characters | ~100 |
| Comment | 10,000 characters | ~500 before Read more |
| Community post | 5,000 characters | ~400 |
| Poll option | 65 characters | Fully shown |
The gap between the two columns is the single most useful thing to internalise. A 100-character title is technically valid, but roughly a third of it will be invisible in the place where most people decide whether to click.
YouTube uses a plain character count. Every character costs exactly one unit, with no weighting and no special cases. This is worth stating explicitly because it differs from X (Twitter), which counts non-Latin characters as two units and forces every URL to a fixed 23-character cost. On YouTube, none of that applies.
The practical consequence for non-English creators is favourable: a Japanese title has the same 100-character budget as an English one, which in practice carries considerably more meaning per character.
YouTube accepts 100 characters in a title, but the field is displayed in several places with different amounts of room, and each one clips the text at a different point. Search results and suggested-video sidebars are the two placements that drive the most views, and both are tighter than the hard limit.
| Placement | Approximate visible length |
|---|---|
| Desktop search results | 60–70 characters |
| Suggested videos sidebar | ~50 characters |
| Mobile app feed | ~40 characters on two lines |
| Watch page (above description) | Full 100 characters |
Because the mobile feed shows the least, the safest structure is to place the specific, distinguishing words first and any branding or series name last. A title reading "How to Fix Slow Wi-Fi in 5 Minutes | TechChannel Ep. 42" survives truncation intact; the same title with the channel name in front loses its meaning entirely on mobile.
A description can run to 5,000 characters, but viewers see roughly three lines — about 157 characters — before the "Show more" control hides the rest. Everything that must be read without a click belongs in that opening window: what the video delivers, and the single most important link.
The remaining 4,800 characters are still worth using. They are indexed, they give YouTube context about the topic, and they are where timestamps, resources and disclosures live. A well-structured description generally follows a predictable order.
Two details catch people out. YouTube displays up to three hashtags beside the video title, but it selects the ones it considers most engaging — you cannot choose them by ordering. And exceeding 60 hashtags on a video or playlist makes YouTube ignore every hashtag on that content, which its documentation also warns can lead to removal from search results.
The 500-character tag allowance is a combined budget rather than a per-tag limit, and commas count toward it. Roughly 30 to 40 short tags will exhaust the field. YouTube has stated that tags play a minimal role in discovery, their main documented use being to compensate for common misspellings of words central to the video.
Because their ranking value is limited, the sensible approach is to spend the budget on a small number of genuinely descriptive terms and any misspellings your audience plausibly types, rather than packing the field with loosely related keywords.
Shorts inherit the standard video fields: 100 characters for the title and 5,000 for the description. The practical difference is that the Shorts player surfaces very little of either, so the title carries nearly the entire burden of explaining the video. In this format the useful budget is closer to 40 characters than 100.
Community posts allow 5,000 characters with roughly 400 visible before truncation, and each poll option is capped at 65 characters. Comments allow a generous 10,000 characters, though the interface collapses anything beyond about 500 behind a "Read more" link.
YouTube Studio shows a counter for the title and description, but it counts against the hard limit rather than the visible one, which is the number that actually affects click-through. It also gives you no way to compare a title against the other platforms you may be promoting the video on.
PostLen counts YouTube titles and descriptions alongside X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok and meta descriptions simultaneously, so a single draft can be checked against every destination at once. Everything runs in the browser and no text is transmitted anywhere.
100 characters. However, search results display only about 60–70 characters and the mobile feed roughly 40, so the practical limit for anything you need viewers to read is closer to 60.
5,000 characters. Only the first 157 or so appear before the "Show more" control, so the opening lines should contain your summary and most important link.
No. YouTube counts every character as one unit regardless of script. This differs from X (Twitter), where characters outside the Latin ranges count as two.
Combined. All tags plus their separating commas share a single 500-character budget, which in practice allows roughly 30–40 short tags.
Up to three appear beside the video title, chosen by YouTube as the most engaging rather than by the order you wrote them. The hard limit is 60: pass it and YouTube ignores every hashtag on that video. A small, relevant set remains the sensible approach.
No. Shorts use the same 100-character title and 5,000-character description limits as standard videos, but the player shows far less of the title, so aim for around 40 characters.
PostLen counts your draft against every platform in this article at the same time.
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