Instagram lets you use up to 5 hashtags on a post or Reel. The cap replaced the old limit of 30 on 18 December 2025, when Instagram’s @creators account announced it. Instagram’s help center now says that if you include more than five tags on a single photo or video, your comment won’t post. Hashtags can go in the caption or in comments, so plan on one budget of five across both.
Key Takeaways
- The limit: five hashtags per post or Reel, down from 30. Instagram’s help center states it, and Instagram announced it on 18 December 2025.
- Comments: hashtags can go in the caption or in comments, and the help center says more than five tags on a photo or video means your comment won’t post. Plan on one budget of five across both, which ends the old trick of 30 tags in the first comment.
- Why: Instagram says a few targeted hashtags perform better than many generic ones. Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, says hashtags help with search but “don’t increase your reach”.
- The API lags: Meta’s developer reference for publishing still lists 30 hashtags per caption in October 2026. The app’s rule is the one to plan for.
- Other platforms differ: Threads allows one topic tag per post, and YouTube ignores every hashtag on a video that carries more than 60.
Hashtag limits by platform
Instagram is not the only platform that caps tags. The table lists the limits each platform states on its own help or developer pages, read in October 2026.
| Platform | Hashtag limit | Where it is stated |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram post or Reel | 5 per post | Instagram Help Center, “Use hashtags on Instagram” |
| Instagram, publishing API | Reference still says 30 per caption | Meta developer docs, IG User Media reference |
| Threads | 1 topic tag per post, up to 50 characters | Threads API docs, “Posts” |
| YouTube | Up to 3 shown by the title; more than 60 and all are ignored | YouTube Help, “Find playlists & videos using hashtags” |
| Bluesky | No limit on tags in the text, which count toward 300 characters; up to 8 more in a separate tags field | Bluesky protocol schema for posts |
What is the Instagram hashtag limit?
Five hashtags per post or Reel. Instagram’s help page on hashtags says “you can use up to 5 tags on a post” and that “if you include more than 5 tags on a single photo/video, your comment won’t post.” The limit covers posts and Reels, and it replaced a cap of 30 that applied for most of Instagram’s history.
In practice Instagram blocks rather than trims. In the 2024 test, Social Media Today reported a pop-up in the composer that blocked further hashtags, and the help page today says an over-limit comment won’t post. Nothing on Instagram’s pages says older posts with more than five tags are changed.
When did Instagram limit hashtags to 5?
On 18 December 2025. Instagram’s @creators account posted on Threads: “Starting today, Instagram will allow up to 5 hashtags in a reel or post.” Instagram’s longer statement said it would “gradually update” the number of hashtags you can include in a caption, so the cap did not reach every account on the same day.
The change had been tested for almost two years. In February 2024 Social Media Today reported that some users were stopped at five hashtags in the composer, and it later reported an experiment that held many accounts to three. That test is the likely origin of the “you can only add 3 hashtags” messages people still search for. Five is the figure Instagram settled on and the one its help center gives today.
Why did Instagram limit hashtags?
Instagram’s reason is quality. Its statement said that “using fewer (up to 5) more targeted hashtags, rather than many generic ones, can improve both your content’s performance and people’s experience on Instagram.” Mosseri put it more bluntly: “a few specific tags actually perform better than a long list of generic ones.”
Spam is the other half. A caption with 30 popular tags put the same post on 30 hashtag pages, which is how spam accounts reached people who never followed them. Meta made the same call on Threads in late 2023, when it introduced topic tags with one per post; Mosseri said at the time that the design should focus tags “more on communities and less on engagement hacking”.
Mosseri has also said, repeatedly, that hashtags do not increase reach. In his December 2025 note he said they help with search but “don’t increase your reach”, and that the better use of your time is “working out what kind of content resonates with your audience”.
Do hashtags in comments count toward the limit?
Yes, as far as Instagram’s help page describes it. The page says you can add hashtags “in the caption or comments of your post”, caps a post at five tags, and says that if you include more than five on a single photo or video, “your comment won’t post”. It does not spell out the arithmetic, so the safe reading is one budget of five for the caption and comments together.
A shared budget ends a habit many accounts relied on: a clean caption followed by a first comment holding 30 hashtags. Now the caption and the first comment share one budget of five. If you want the caption free of tags, put all five in the first comment; if you write them into the caption, leave the first comment for text.
How many hashtags should you use on Instagram?
Between one and five, and fewer is fine. Instagram’s own guidance is “fewer (up to 5) more targeted hashtags”, so a set of three precise tags follows the advice as well as five does. What matters is that each tag describes the post, because a hashtag now works as a label for search.
A simple way to fill five slots:
- One subject tag that names what the post is about, such as #sourdough or #runningshoes.
- One or two community tags that the people you want to reach actually follow or search, such as #homebaking.
- One location or audience tag where it applies, such as #londonfood.
- One branded tag if you run a campaign or series people can browse.
Skip tags that describe nothing, like #love or #instagood. So many posts carry them that yours is unlikely to stand out on their pages, and Instagram’s advice is to replace generic tags with specific ones. For Reels, the same five-tag rule applies, and our list of Instagram Reel ideas shows the kind of specific subject that suits a precise tag.
Do hashtags still work on Instagram?
They help people find a post, but they do not grow its reach on their own. Instagram’s help page says a public post with a hashtag becomes visible on that hashtag’s page, and tapping a tag shows everything posted with it. Mosseri has said many times that hashtags don’t increase reach, while calling them “a great way to let people know what a post is about”.
So hashtags work as labels. They tell Instagram and searchers what the post covers, which matters most for niche subjects where a hashtag page is small enough for a post to stay visible. They do not push a post to people who are not looking for that subject. A caption that states the topic in plain words does the same labelling job for a reader, and Mosseri’s advice is to spend the effort you once put into tag lists on learning what your audience responds to.
LinkedIn went through the same shift, and our answer to do hashtags work on LinkedIn covers how that platform treats tags today.
Does the limit apply to scheduled posts and the API?
The app’s rule should be your rule for scheduled posts too. Meta’s developer reference for publishing to Instagram, read in October 2026, still describes a caption as “Maximum 2200 characters, 30 hashtags, and 20 @ tags”, so the documentation has not caught up with the help center. We found no Meta page that says what happens to a sixth hashtag sent through the API.
That gap means the API may accept a caption the app would refuse, or may start refusing it without notice. The safe course is to write every Instagram caption, scheduled or not, to the five-tag limit, and to count the tags in any first comment against the same five. The 2,200-character caption length is the same, and our guide to the Instagram caption character limit covers what counts toward it. Our Instagram post size guide lists the image ratios.
How PostNext fits the five-hashtag limit
PostNext has two pieces that matter here: a hashtag generator that writes sets of three or five tags, and an Instagram scheduler that can publish a first comment for you. Both keep a post within the five-tag limit, with the caption and the comment counted together.
The Instagram hashtag generator writes its set from a description of your post, so a set never runs past Instagram’s limit; generating needs a PostNext account. The hashtag checker on the same page is free, runs in your browser and needs no account: paste a caption, or a caption plus its first comment, to see whether it stays within five.
The PostNext Instagram scheduler publishes feed posts, Reels, image Stories and carousels through Instagram’s official API, and it can publish a first comment automatically right after the post goes live. The scheduler counts the hashtags in the caption and the first comment as one budget and will not save or schedule an Instagram post that has more than five, so a sixth tag never reaches Instagram. On Threads, which PostNext also publishes to, plan for one topic tag per post; our comparison of Threads vs Bluesky covers how tags work on each.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many hashtags can you use on Instagram?
Five per post or Reel. Instagram lowered the limit from 30 on 18 December 2025, and its help center says that if you include more than five tags on a single photo or video, your comment won’t post. The limit covers posts and Reels.
Why can I only add 3 hashtags on Instagram?
Instagram ran an experiment that held many accounts to three hashtags, which is the likely source of that message. The announced limit since 18 December 2025 is five, and Instagram’s help center gives five as the number per post or Reel.
Do hashtags in the first comment count toward Instagram’s limit?
Treat them as if they do. Instagram’s help center lets you add hashtags in the caption or in comments, caps a post at five tags and says that more than five on a photo or video means your comment won’t post. Keep the caption and first comment to five tags in total.
Can you still use 30 hashtags on Instagram?
Not in the Instagram app. The limit has been five per post or Reel since December 2025. Meta’s developer reference for the publishing API still mentions 30 hashtags per caption, but Meta’s pages do not explain the gap, so plan scheduled posts around five as well.
How many hashtags can you use on Threads?
One. Threads allows a single topic tag per post, up to 50 characters, and the Threads API treats the first valid tag in a post as its topic. Meta launched tags this way in December 2023 to keep them focused on communities rather than reach.
Related reading
- Do Hashtags Work on LinkedIn in 2026?
- How to Use AI to Optimize Social Media Hashtag Strategies in 2026
- Instagram Post Size: Every Feed Dimension in 2026
- 30 Instagram Reel Ideas You Can Film This Week
Sources
- Instagram Help Center, Use hashtags on Instagram (October 2026)
- Instagram’s @creators on Threads, New hashtag guidance (18 December 2025)
- The Verge, Instagram wants to limit hashtag spam (18 December 2025)
- Social Media Today, Instagram Implements New Limits on Hashtag Use (December 2025) and Instagram’s Testing New Limits on How Many Hashtags You Can Add (13 February 2024)
- Meta for Developers, IG User Media reference (October 2026)
- Meta for Developers, Threads API: Posts (October 2026)
- YouTube Help, Find playlists & videos using hashtags (October 2026)
