Character Limits for Bios, Names and Posts, and How Fancy Text Counts

This page lists limits for names, bios and posts on Instagram, TikTok, Discord, X, Facebook and popular games, each labelled official, observed, third-party or conflicting. The sections before the tables explain why a styled word can count as 5, 7, 10 or 20, so you can plan around the strictest count.

How do platforms count characters?

Platforms count characters in one of four ways, and fancy text is where they stop agreeing. When a platform says “150 characters”, it means graphemes, code points, UTF-16 code units or UTF-8 bytes.

X adds a fifth: its own weighted count, published in the open-source twitter-text configuration. Code points from U+0000 to U+10FF, plus three small punctuation ranges (U+2000–200D, U+2010–201F and U+2032–2037), weigh 1. Everything else weighs 2, and the limit is 280.

How many characters is a styled word?

It depends on the unit: plain “Hello” counts as 5 everywhere, while bold “Hello” is 10 UTF-16 units and 20 UTF-8 bytes. Here is the word “Hello” in four styles, counted every way. The X weights come from the twitter-text rules above; the rest were computed directly from the characters.

What each row teaches:

• Bold letters live at U+1D400 and above, beyond the range that fits in a single UTF-16 unit. So they look like five characters but are stored as ten units and twenty bytes. Any counter built on a JavaScript string length would see 10. Cursive, gothic, outline and the other maths alphabets behave the same way.
• Strikethrough keeps the normal letters and adds U+0336 COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY after each one. That doubles the code point count. On X, the combining mark is inside the weight-1 range, so each struck letter costs 2 (letter 1 + mark 1).
• Small caps are the odd one out. ʜ and ʟ come from IPA Extensions (U+0250–02AF), which X weighs as 1. ᴇ and ᴏ come from Phonetic Extensions (U+1D00–1D7F), which X weighs as 2. So “Hello” in small caps costs 7 on X, not 5 or 10, and the exact cost depends on which letters you use.

Other common styles for comparison:

On X, that means most styled text halves the space you have: 280 becomes roughly 140 styled letters. Upside-down text is the exception, because its look-alike letters mostly sit in the low-weight range. The X (Twitter) fonts page shows the weighted count live as you type.

Do frames, emoji and invisible characters count?

Yes, all of them count, and often more than they look. Styled letters are rarely used alone. Names get frames, bios get emoji, and both change the count in ways that surprise people.

Three things to take from this:

• Frames cost more than they look. The two ornaments in ꧁ ꧂ are characters from the Javanese script, at U+A9C1 and U+A9C2, so each weighs 2 on X. A frame can easily cost as much as a short name.
• Emoji are the extreme case for code points. The family emoji is one picture but five code points and eight UTF-16 units. X treats any emoji sequence as 2 by design, but a field that counts code points or UTF-16 units will charge you far more. If a bio is rejected as too long when it looks short, emoji are the usual reason.
• Invisible characters count. Variation selectors, zero-width joiners and zero-width spaces take up room in nearly every counting method even though nothing appears on screen.

Why does the same text get different counts?

Because platforms count in different units and rarely say which. Platforms rarely document which unit their limits use, and the choice is often an accident of the technology behind the field rather than a deliberate policy. A text box written in JavaScript naturally counts UTF-16 units. A server written in Python naturally counts code points. A database column may be sized in bytes. So a count that fits one platform, or even one version of an app, isn’t guaranteed to fit another.

That is why this guide gives each style’s count in every unit rather than a single number. If you know a field’s limit and your text’s count in each unit, the worst case is the largest of them, and planning for it means your text will fit whichever method the platform turns out to use.

Instagram bio character limit and other platform limits, field by field

Platform rules change, and many help centres don’t state limits at all. Each figure below is labelled:

• Official: from the platform’s own help centre or published code.
• Observed: enforced by the platform’s own sign-up form, app or web client when we tested it, but not stated in any help article we found.
• Third-party: widely reported by guides and tools, not confirmed by the platform in the sources we found.
• Conflicting: sources disagree.

The limits were compiled in October 2026. If a number matters, check the counter in the app itself.

What is the Instagram bio limit?

The Instagram bio limit is 150 characters, while the username and name fields both stop at 30.

Instagram hasn’t said how its counters treat styled letters. Because some counters measure UTF-16 units (see the table above), a bold or cursive bio could count up to twice its visible length. Paste it into the field and check before relying on the visible count. The Instagram fonts page covers which fields accept which styles.

How long can TikTok names and bios be?

A TikTok bio can be 80 characters, a nickname 30 and a username 2 to 24.

More detail on the TikTok fonts page.

How long can Discord names and About Me be?

A Discord display name can be 1 to 32 characters and About Me 190.

Discord’s markdown (**bold**, *italic*, ~~strike~~) works in messages only, not in names. See the Discord fonts page.

What are the X (Twitter) limits?

X allows 15 characters in a username, 50 in a display name, 160 in a bio and 280 weighted characters in a post.

Whether X applies the same weighting to display names and bios isn’t documented in the sources we found.

Can Facebook names use fancy text?

Not in profile names. Facebook’s name policy rules out “symbols, numbers, unusual capitalization, repeating characters or punctuation” and “characters from multiple languages” in profile names, so styled letters break the policy there. Posts, comments and bios accept them. We didn’t find official numeric limits for these fields, so we don’t list any.

What are the character limits in games?

Game name limits are the least documented of all, so each row says whether a figure is official or third-party. Where a publisher states a rule we link it; treat the rest as a starting point, and test in the rename screen if it costs anything.

Steam is the clearest example of why the counting unit matters. Valve’s Steamworks documentation caps a persona name at 32 UTF-16 code units and 128 UTF-8 bytes, and a name has to fit both. Plain letters cost 1 unit and 1 byte, so 32 fit. Bold, cursive and the other maths alphabets cost 2 units and 4 bytes each, so the 32-unit cap stops you at 16 letters, while the byte cap would have allowed 32 of them. Circled letters cost 1 unit and 3 bytes, so 32 still fit (96 bytes).

For in-game names, the Free Fire name style and BGMI name style generators focus on short names and symbol frames that fit these limits.

How do I stay under a limit with styled text?

Style only part of the text, prefer low-weight styles on X, and count decorations too.

1. Style only part of it. A styled first name with a plain surname, or one styled word in a bio, costs far less than styling everything.
2. Prefer single-code-point styles for code-point limits. Strikethrough, underline and glitch styles add a code point per letter; bold, cursive and bubble don’t.
3. Prefer low-weight styles on X. Small caps and superscripts cost less than bold or cursive, and plain text with one styled word costs least.
4. Count decorations too. A frame such as ꧁ ꧂ or ★彡 彡★ adds characters at both ends, and many decorative symbols are themselves weighted as 2 on X.
5. Watch the platform’s own counter, not ours. Our tools show code points, graphemes and X weight so you can compare, but the only count that decides whether your bio saves is the one in the app.
6. Beware invisible characters. Zero-width spaces and joiners take up a character in most counts even though you can’t see them. Our letter-tile style uses them to stop letters merging into flags, so remember they are there.
7. Email subject lines are plain text. Styled letters can travel in them but cost more storage and may display as boxes; see bold text in email subject lines.

Whatever the Instagram bio character limit or any other cap, plan for the largest of the counts above, then check the counter in the app before you save.