Why every network counts differently
Each social network sets its own length limit, and they do not count the same way. A post that fits on LinkedIn can be ten times too long for X, and the same emoji can cost one character on Bluesky and two on X. Checking a post by hand against each network is slow and easy to get wrong, especially when one message goes to five or six channels.
This counter shows every network side by side. Type once and you see how many characters each network sees, how many are left, and which networks your post is too long for.
How the counting works
- X uses a weighted count. Each link counts as 23 characters. Emoji and characters outside the Latin and common punctuation ranges, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, count as 2.
- Bluesky counts graphemes: what a reader sees as one character counts as one, even an emoji family made of several code points.
- Mastodon counts each link as 23 characters and counts a mention like @[email protected] as @name. Many servers keep the default 500; some allow more.
- Every other network counts Unicode code points, so an emoji usually counts as 1 or 2 depending on how it is built.
Write once, fit everywhere
The quickest way to fit a long post on short networks is to write the full version first, then cut a short version for X, Threads and Bluesky. Put the key message and the link in the first sentence, since feeds often cut long posts after a line or two. Keep hashtags to a few relevant ones: PostBoost allows up to 5 on Instagram.
When you schedule with PostBoost, the composer runs the same checks for each connected account before a post goes out, so a post that is too long never reaches the network only to fail.