The LinkedIn post character limit is 3,000 characters, and here is every other limit LinkedIn publishes, plus the ones it never does.

What is the LinkedIn post character limit?

The LinkedIn post character limit is 3,000 characters. LinkedIn states this in its help article on posting and sharing updates, and repeats it in the article that compares posts with published articles. It is the hard stop for a normal feed post.

Every number on this page was read on a LinkedIn Help page and is linked in the sources. Where LinkedIn publishes no figure, this page says so instead of repeating a number that circulates on blogs and character counter tools. Our LinkedIn character counter uses the same figures.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Most of the widely quoted LinkedIn limits, including the two that sales teams care about most, are not published by LinkedIn anywhere in its help documentation.

Every LinkedIn character limit that LinkedIn publishes

These are the figures stated on LinkedIn Help pages, with the page each one comes from. Nothing in this table is inferred, counted by hand, or taken from a third party.

Two rows there are unusual. The comment figure appears on the page about group limits, not on a page about the feed. The InMail body figure appears twice on LinkedIn Help with two different numbers. Both are covered below.

The character limit on LinkedIn that you cannot look up

For several fields, the character limit on LinkedIn is enforced in the product but never written down in the help center. The editor counts down for you, and that counter is the only official answer available.

Blog posts and counter tools give confident figures for all seven. Those figures may well be right, and some of them are easy to verify by pasting text into the field yourself. They are still not LinkedIn's published numbers, so they are not repeated here as facts.

LinkedIn About section character limit

The most searched number on this topic is the LinkedIn About section character limit, and it is the clearest example of the gap. LinkedIn's help page for the About section explains how to edit it on desktop and mobile and gives no character figure at all.

One figure circulates widely across blogs and counter tools, and it is not on any LinkedIn Help page. It is not repeated here as a fact. If you need the real ceiling for your account, open the About editor, paste your draft, and read the counter.

The practical advice does not depend on the exact ceiling. The opening lines are what a prospect reads before deciding whether to expand the section, so put the people you help and the problem you solve in the first two sentences, not your career history.

• Lead with the buyer: name the role and the problem in the first line, not your job title.
• Keep the paragraphs short: two or three sentences each, with a blank line between them.
• Put proof in the middle: what you have done, in plain words, without invented figures.
• Close with a next step: how to reach you, and what a first conversation covers.

Our guide on how to create a LinkedIn profile covers the other sections, and LinkedIn SEO covers the search side of the same fields.

The LinkedIn headline limit

LinkedIn's help page on editing your headline is a set of click-by-click steps. It defines the headline as the text below your name, and it gives no character count. The figure quoted everywhere else is not stated there.

What matters for sales is not the ceiling but the visible portion. Your headline travels with you into search results, invitation cards, comment threads and notifications, and each of those surfaces shows a different amount of it on a different screen size.

So write the headline so the first short phrase works alone. If it reads correctly after the first few words, it reads correctly everywhere. See LinkedIn headline examples for patterns by role.

Where the "see more" truncation point falls

LinkedIn does not publish where a feed post is cut by the "see more" link. There is no help article with that number, and the cut differs between desktop, the mobile app and the mobile web, and changes when LinkedIn changes the feed.

LinkedIn does publish one truncation figure, and it is for ads. In its single image ad specifications, LinkedIn recommends using up to 150 characters of introductory text, including spaces, emojis and punctuation, to avoid truncation, within a 3,000 character maximum.

That is advertising guidance, not a rule for organic posts. It is still the closest thing to an official signal about how much feed text survives the fold, and it is a reasonable place to start if you want a working number.

The practical rule is unchanged by the missing number: put the point of the post in the first two lines, and preview the post on a phone before publishing. Expansions are an action, and they feed the engagement that drives LinkedIn impressions.

How to write inside 3,000 characters

Counting an average English word plus its space at around six characters, 3,000 characters works out near 500 words. That is arithmetic, not a measurement. Very few feed posts need that much room, because the limit is rarely the constraint. Attention is.

• One idea per post. If a draft has two arguments, you have two posts.
• First line alone. Write it so it makes sense with nothing after it.
• Line breaks, not walls. One or two sentences per block, with blank lines between them.
• Cut the throat-clearing. "I wanted to share a quick thought on" costs characters and attention.
• End with one ask. A question, a link in the comments, or nothing at all.
• Save the overflow. If you are near 3,000, the extra material is a second post or an article.

When a post genuinely needs more room, the format changes rather than the limit. A document post is one option, and LinkedIn carousel posts move the long part into slides that people swipe.

The LinkedIn comment character limit

LinkedIn publishes 1,250 characters as the character limit for comments, on its page of general limits for LinkedIn groups. The same table gives 3,000 characters for group posts and 20 mentions within one conversation.

That page is about groups, so read the figure in context: it is LinkedIn's published comment limit, stated on a groups page, and LinkedIn does not publish a separate figure for comments on feed posts. Our guide to LinkedIn groups covers the rest of that table.

For sales, 1,250 characters is far more than a comment should use. A comment that adds one specific point is read; a comment that reads like a post is skipped, and it competes with the post it sits under.

Connection request note: 200 characters

LinkedIn's help page on personalizing invitations to connect states that each message can be up to 200 characters, and that you can add a personalized message to up to three connection requests per month on a free account.

A second LinkedIn Help page, on the differences between InMail messages and personalized invitations, says free accounts get five personalized invitations at 200 characters, and that Premium members send unlimited notes at 300 characters each.

The two pages disagree, and the invitations page is the more recently updated of the two. Treat 200 characters as the number to write to, assume the free monthly allowance is small, and check your own account before you plan a campaign around it.

By the same arithmetic, 200 characters is somewhere near 33 words. That is one sentence of context and one sentence of reason. It is not room for a pitch, and a note that tries to pitch inside it reads worse than no note at all.

InMail character limits, and the number that disagrees

LinkedIn publishes 200 characters for the InMail subject line on every page that mentions it. The body figure is not consistent across LinkedIn's own help center.

Write to 1,900 and you are inside both. In practice the useful ceiling is far lower, because the same LinkedIn page notes that the character counter changes color as the message gets longer, to push you toward something shorter.

See what InMail is on LinkedIn for how credits work, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator for the seat where most sales InMail is sent.

Regular LinkedIn messages

For an ordinary message to a first-degree connection, LinkedIn publishes no character limit. The messaging help pages cover how to send, who you can message and how many people fit in a group conversation, with no figure for message length.

Plan around the InMail numbers instead. If a message needs more than about 1,900 characters, it is a document, a call or a post, and sending it as a wall of text in the messaging pane will cost you the reply.

Company Page and article fields

LinkedIn's help page for editing a LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page walks through the tagline, description, website and industry fields without giving a character count for any of them. The figures quoted elsewhere for the tagline and the description are not LinkedIn's.

Articles are the exception. LinkedIn states that articles are limited to 125,000 characters, which is a book chapter rather than a post. The article title has no published limit, and neither does a LinkedIn newsletter title or description.

The practical effect for a page admin is the same as for a profile: open the editor, paste the draft, and let the counter tell you what fits today.

Poll limits: 140 and 30

LinkedIn's Polls FAQ answers the question directly. Poll questions are limited to a maximum of 140 characters and poll options to a maximum of 30 characters each.

Thirty characters is tight. Options like "We outsource it to an agency" do not fit, so write options as short noun phrases and put the definitions in the post text above the poll, where you have the full 3,000.

Ad character limits, where LinkedIn is most precise

LinkedIn's advertising specifications are the most detailed character guidance it publishes, because a truncated ad wastes money. These figures are from the single image ad specifications page.

The same page adds two details worth knowing. You can use up to 10 emojis in the introductory text, and a URL longer than 23 characters is converted to a short link, which changes how much of your text survives.

What actually counts as a character

LinkedIn does not publish a general counting rule for organic posts. The one statement it does make is in the ad specifications, where introductory text is counted "including spaces, emojis, and punctuation".

• Spaces and punctuation: counted, per LinkedIn's own ad wording.
• Emojis: counted, and LinkedIn caps ad introductory text at 10 of them.
• Line breaks: LinkedIn publishes nothing, so assume every break costs at least one character.
• Hashtags and mentions: LinkedIn publishes no counting rule; it does cap mentions in one conversation at 20.
• Links in ads: a URL over 23 characters becomes a short link, per the ad specifications.

If a post is close to the ceiling, the editor is the referee. Paste, look at the counter, and cut from the middle rather than the opening.

How to write to a LinkedIn character limit

1. Decide the surface before you write

   A feed post, a comment, a connection note and an InMail have different ceilings and very different readers. Pick one and write for it rather than reusing text across all four.

2. Write the first line on its own

   Draft the opening sentence separately and check that it carries the point without the rest. This is the only part guaranteed to be read on every device.

3. Draft long in a plain text editor

   Write without worrying about the count, then trim. Drafting inside LinkedIn encourages padding to fill the box and panic cuts at the end.

4. Cut from the middle

   Protect the opening and the ask. Everything between them is where the qualifiers, the setup and the second example live, and that is what comes out first.

5. Paste in and read the counter

   The field itself is the authority for the fields LinkedIn does not document, including the headline, the About section and Page details. Note the number you see for next time.

6. Preview on a phone, then publish

   Check where the text is cut on mobile, not just on desktop. Move anything essential above that point, and only then schedule or send.

A character budget for a sales sequence

Character limits shape an outreach sequence more than most teams notice. Each step has a different ceiling, and the shortest steps carry the most weight because they decide whether the next one happens.

That budget is a planning aid written for this page, not a benchmark. It pairs with the sequencing in LinkedIn prospecting and the message spacing in a sales cadence.

Mistakes with LinkedIn character limits

• Treating a blog's number as LinkedIn's number, then building a template around it.
• Writing to the ceiling because it is there, when the fold cuts the post far earlier.
• Spending the first line of a post on a greeting or a preamble.
• Pitching inside a 200 character connection note, which leaves no room for context.
• Using the full InMail body, when LinkedIn's own counter pushes you to be shorter.
• Writing poll options longer than 30 characters and having to rewrite the poll.
• Forgetting that a headline is shown in invitations and comments, not only on the profile.
• Copying the same text into a post, a comment and a message, where three different ceilings apply.

A connection note that fits in 200 characters

The template below was written for this page. It fits inside the 200 character limit LinkedIn publishes for a personalized invitation, once the placeholders are replaced with short values.

Hi {{firstName}}, we both follow {{topic}} and your note on {{detail}} matched what I hear from {{role}} teams. Connecting to keep reading, nothing to pitch.

Frequently asked questions