LinkedIn Character Counter
Pick the field you are writing for, paste your text, and see how it counts against that limit and how much of it LinkedIn will actually show.
The feed shows about three lines on desktop and two on a phone, then hides the rest behind more.
0 words · 0 without spaces
Counting is the quick part.
Oiti drafts LinkedIn posts from the ones you have already published, so the next one arrives inside the limit with the hook already in the first line.
7 days free · No usage limits
A LinkedIn headline and a LinkedIn post have almost nothing in common except that both of them can be too long. One gets 220 characters and sits under your name everywhere you go. The other gets 3,000 and nobody reads past the third line. Counting them against the same number tells you nothing useful about either.
So this counts one field at a time. Pick what you are writing and the limit, the help line and the preview all change to match. Where LinkedIn hides the rest of your text behind a link, the preview shows you where it stops.
How to use it
Three steps, no account, and nothing leaves your browser.
- 1
Pick the field
Post, headline, About section, comment, connection note or message. The limit, the help line and the preview all follow from that one choice, so a headline is counted against 220 and shown on a profile rather than in the feed.
- 2
Paste or type your text
The count updates as you type, in your browser. Go over and it tells you by how much instead of stopping at the cap.
- 3
Read the preview
For a post, a headline and an About section it shows where LinkedIn stops showing your text. That cut usually matters more than the limit does.
Every LinkedIn character limit
Every field LinkedIn caps, including the three this tool has no mode for.
| Field | Limit | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Post | 3,000 | The ordinary feed update. Spaces, line breaks, hashtags and emoji all count. |
| Article | 125,000 | For long pieces written in LinkedIn's article editor rather than the feed box. |
| Headline | 220 | The line under your name, on your profile and beside every post you write. |
| About section | 2,600 | The long block on your profile, under your headline and your photo. |
| Comment | 1,250 | Replies on any post, yours or somebody else's. |
| Connection note | 300 | Goes out with an invitation to someone you have not connected with yet. |
| Direct message | 8,000 | The inbox, once you are connected. Not the same box as the 300-character note. |
| InMail body | 1,900 | A paid message to someone outside your network. |
| Company page post | 3,000 | A post published as the page rather than as you. The same cap either way. |
The row people get wrong is the direct message. A note attached to an invitation and a message to an existing connection are not the same box and do not share a number, and several popular counters publish 300 for both. If a tool tells you your DM is over at 300 characters, it is measuring the invitation.
Where LinkedIn stops showing your text
Three of these fields stop showing your text long before the limit does, and each one stops in a different place.
A post in the feed is measured in lines, not characters. You get about three on desktop and two on a phone, and then everything else goes behind more. Because it is lines, a blank line costs the same as a full sentence, so a one-line hook followed by a gap and a second line can spend the whole preview on very little text. A pasted link behaves the same way: there is nothing in it to break at, so it moves to the next line whole and takes your hook with it.
An About section shows around the first 300 characters on your profile. The rest is behind see more, and most people never press it. Whatever you want a stranger to know about you belongs in those first few lines.
A headline gets cut around 180 characters on a phone, which is where most people will read it. The 220 you are given is real, and the last 40 of it are a gamble.
Comments, connection notes and direct messages get no cutoff here, because there is no figure worth putting on a screen for them. Those three modes show the count and leave it there.
What to do when you are over
Cutting to fit a limit and cutting to land above the fold are two different jobs, and trimming the last sentence only ever fixes the first one.
Over 3,000 on a post means you have more than one post. Move the overflow into a first comment, or put the long version in an article and use the sharpest argument as the teaser.
A hook that drowns below the fold is never fixed from the end. Move the best sentence to line one, delete the throat-clearing that was sitting above it, and push the first blank line further down the draft.
Headlines and About sections are a different problem, because the box is genuinely small. 220 characters is about a sentence and a half. Adjectives go first. The specifics are the part anyone remembers.
More free tools
Once the length is right, the formatting usually is not. The LinkedIn text post formatter handles bold, italics and the line breaks that survive a paste into the composer, and it carries the same feed preview you see here. If the headline is the field that is fighting you, the LinkedIn headline generator writes straight to the 220 cap. The LinkedIn post date extractor tells you the exact second any post went up, from its URL alone. The rest of the set is on the free tools hub.
Frequently asked questions
- How many characters can a LinkedIn post be?
- 3,000 characters. Spaces, line breaks, hashtags and emoji all count towards it, so the raw length of what you paste is the number. Anything longer has to be an article instead, which runs to 125,000.
- What is the LinkedIn headline character limit?
- 220 characters. On a phone the line gets cut around 180, so the part that has to land belongs at the front rather than at the end.
- What is the LinkedIn About section character limit?
- 2,600 characters. Around the first 300 show before the see more link, and most readers stop there. Bio and summary are other names for the same section.
- What is the character limit on a LinkedIn connection request?
- 300 characters, and that is the note attached to an invitation. It is the shortest writing box on LinkedIn, which is roughly the point of it.
- What is the LinkedIn message character limit?
- 8,000 characters for a message to someone you are already connected to. That is not the same field as the 300-character connection note, and a paid InMail body is a third field again at 1,900.
- What is the LinkedIn comment character limit?
- 1,250 characters. A long comment collapses behind a link in the thread, so the opening sentence is the only part most people will read on their way past.
- Does LinkedIn count spaces?
- Yes. Every space, line break, hashtag and emoji counts against the limit. In a post, line breaks cost you twice: once against the 3,000, and again against the two or three lines you get before the feed hides the rest.
- How many words fit in a LinkedIn post?
- Around 500, since the real limit is 3,000 characters and ordinary English prose works out at roughly that. LinkedIn counts characters, not words, so a word count is only ever a rough guide. This counter shows both, and the one it holds you to is the character count.
Getting a draft under the limit takes a minute. Landing the first two lines, on every post, week after week, is the part that takes years.
Oiti reads the posts you have already published, picks up the way you actually talk, and drafts the next ones that way, with the hook in the first line and the whole thing already inside the cap.