YouTube Character Limits 2026 (Title, Description)

YouTube spreads its character limits across three different fields, title, description, and tags, and most guides only cover one at a time. Here is everything in one place, since planning a YouTube upload usually means thinking about all three together.

YouTube Character Limit

Checked as of July 2026, here is the full youtube character limit picture:

Field	Character limit	Practical truncation
Title	100	~70 in search results, suggested videos, and notifications
Description	5,000	~157 (desktop) / ~100 (mobile) before "Show more"
Tags (combined)	500 total	No official hard cap per tag; ~30 characters/tag is typical

YouTube Title Character Limit: Why 100 Isn't the Real Target

The youtube title character limit is 100 characters, but that number rarely matters in practice, because search results, suggested-video tiles, end screens, and mobile notifications all truncate around 70 characters. A title that reads perfectly at 95 characters in your upload dashboard can get cut off mid-word almost everywhere a viewer actually encounters it. Write for 70, not 100.

YouTube Description Character Limit: Front-Load the First Two Lines

The youtube description character limit is 5,000 characters, plenty of room for timestamps, links, and a full write-up. But only the first roughly 157 characters show on desktop, and closer to 100 on mobile, before a viewer has to tap "Show more" to see the rest. Put your strongest hook, and any single most important link, inside that visible window, not three paragraphs down.

Tags: More Limited Than People Expect

YouTube tags share one combined pool of 500 characters across all of them, not 500 characters each. There is no strict published per-tag maximum, but tags longer than about 30 characters are unusual in practice and eat into that shared budget fast. A handful of precise, relevant tags does more for discoverability than filling the field with as many short tags as will fit.

One more thing worth knowing: if the hashtags across your title and description combined go over 60, YouTube ignores all of them rather than just dropping the extras (per YouTube's own help page; the "15" figure still floating around the web is stale), so a video that leans on hashtags for discovery should stay well under that count.

Planning All Three Together

A strong upload treats title, description, and tags as one system rather than three separate boxes to fill in: the title earns the click within its visible 70 characters, the description's first two lines earn the "Show more" tap, and tags support search without wasting characters on anything vague. A YouTube title checker and a description counter both help confirm you are inside the visible windows before you publish, not just the technical limits.

Publishing on a Consistent Schedule

Once the metadata is dialed in, consistency is what actually builds a channel. Posted Once schedules YouTube uploads alongside your other platforms so a well-optimized title and description go out on a rhythm your subscribers can count on. Start free →

100 characters, 5,000 characters, and 500 characters are the technical limits. 70, 157, and a handful of precise tags are the ones that actually decide what a viewer sees.