A YouTube title holds up to 100 characters, and a Short’s title has the same cap. Titles and descriptions cannot contain the < or > signs. The description allows 5,000, but YouTube’s API counts that in bytes, so accented and non-Latin text fits fewer characters. Tags share 500 characters in total, and the commas between them count too.
Key Takeaways
- Title: 100 characters for every video, including Shorts, with no < or > anywhere in it.
- Description: 5,000. YouTube Help says characters, the YouTube Data API says bytes. In English the two match; in Japanese, the API fits about 1,666 characters.
- Tags: 500 characters across all tags. Each comma between tags counts, and a tag with a space counts 2 extra for the quotes YouTube wraps it in.
- Hashtags: up to 3 from the description show by the title, and a video with more than 60 hashtags has all of them ignored.
- Channel: the channel description holds 1,000 characters, and a handle takes 3 to 30.
YouTube character limits at a glance
Every limit below comes from YouTube Help or the YouTube Data API reference, read on 31 October 2026. The API pages were last updated on 15 October 2026.
| Field | Limit | How it is counted |
|---|---|---|
| Video title | 100 characters | No < or > |
| Shorts title | 100 characters | Same as any video |
| Video description | 5,000 | Characters in YouTube Help, bytes in the API; no < or > |
| Tags | 500 characters in total | Commas between tags count; quotes around a tag with a space count |
| Hashtags | More than 60 and all are ignored | Up to 3 from the description show by the title |
| Channel description | 1,000 characters | API channel resource |
| Channel keywords | 500 characters in total | Not per keyword |
| Handle | 3 to 30 characters | Han and Hangul 1 to 10; Hiragana, Katakana and Ethiopic 2 to 20 |
What is the YouTube title character limit?
The YouTube title character limit is 100 characters. YouTube Studio’s help page on video settings says “video titles have a character limit of 100 characters and cannot include invalid characters”. The YouTube Data API reference names those invalid characters: a title “may contain all valid UTF-8 characters except < and >”.
The Studio help page and the API state the same 100, so the cap holds however you upload. If a title needs a “less than” or “greater than” sign, write the words or use an arrow character instead.
How many characters of a title does YouTube show?
YouTube does not say. None of the YouTube Help pages or API references we read gives a number of title characters shown before it is cut off in search, on the home page or in the Shorts feed. The figures you see in title checkers are their own measurements, and they change with screen size, device and the surface the video appears on.
What YouTube does say is where to put your keywords. Its tips page on descriptions tells creators to “identify 1-2 main words that describe your video and feature them prominently in both your description and title”. Our view: put those words in the first half of the title, write the rest so it still reads if cut short, and use all 100 characters only when the extra words earn their place.
Is the YouTube Shorts title limit different?
No. A Short’s title has the same 100-character cap as any other video. YouTube’s help page on uploading Shorts from the app tells you to “add details to your video, such as a title (max 100 characters)”, and the page on creating Shorts says the same. A Short is an ordinary upload with a vertical or square frame, so the title, description and tag limits above all apply.
What changes is length. A Short can run up to 3 minutes, and our guide to how long YouTube Shorts can be covers the one-minute catch for videos with a copyright claim.
What is the YouTube description character limit?
The YouTube description character limit is 5,000. YouTube Help says 5,000 characters. The YouTube Data API reference, which upload tools and schedulers use, says the description “has a maximum length of 5000 bytes”. For English text the two are the same, because each letter, digit and common punctuation mark takes one byte. Accented and non-Latin letters take two to four bytes each.
Here is what that means for a full description sent through the API. The bytes per character come from how UTF-8 encodes each script.
| Text | Bytes per character | Characters in 5,000 bytes |
|---|---|---|
| English letters, digits, basic punctuation | 1 | 5,000 |
| Accented Latin (é, ü, ñ), Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew | 2 | 2,500 |
| Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Thai | 3 | 1,666 |
| A single emoji such as 😀 | 4 | 1,250 |
A Spanish or French description mixes plain and accented letters, so it lands somewhere between 2,500 and 5,000 characters. A Japanese description written to the 5,000 characters in YouTube Help is three times too long for an upload tool. The same API page notes that links in a description become clickable only once the channel is verified or has advanced features, and that timestamps such as 00:00 create video chapters.
Viewers see the start first. YouTube’s tips page says the description has two parts, what shows before “Show more” on desktop or “more” on mobile, and what shows after. Put what the video is about in those first lines, and keep links, credits and channel details further down. For the video file itself, our guide to YouTube video size covers resolution and file limits.
How do YouTube tags count toward the 500-character limit?
YouTube tags share one 500-character limit, and two things count on top of the tag text. The YouTube Data API reference says “commas between items in the list count toward the limit”, and that a tag containing a space is handled “as though it were wrapped in quotation marks”, with the quotes counted. Its own example: the tag Foo-Baz is seven characters, Foo Baz is nine.
A worked example. The tags youtube tips, shorts and video editing look like 31 characters. YouTube counts 14 for “youtube tips” with its quotes, 6 for shorts, 15 for “video editing”, plus 2 commas: 37. On a long list of two-word tags, the quotes and commas take about a fifth of the 500.
The bigger question is whether tags are worth the space. YouTube’s help page on tags says they “play a minimal role in your video’s discovery” and are mainly useful “if the content of your video is commonly misspelled”. The title, thumbnail and description matter more. Tags also belong in the tags field: YouTube says adding excessive tags to a description is against its spam policies.
Can you put hashtags in a YouTube title?
Yes. YouTube Help says you can add hashtags “to a title and description”, and hashtags in either link to a page of other videos with the same tag. A hashtag has no spaces, so two words are joined, as in #TwoWords. Every hashtag in the title uses characters from the 100.
Hashtags in the description are usually the better trade. YouTube shows up to three of the description’s hashtags “that are considered most engaging” by your title, without using any title characters. Keep the count low: if a video has more than 60 hashtags, YouTube ignores every one of them, and its help page warns that over-tagging risks removal from search. The YouTube hashtag generator page has a free hashtag checker that runs in your browser.
What is the YouTube channel description character limit?
The YouTube channel description holds up to 1,000 characters. The YouTube Data API’s channel resource sets that maximum for the description. YouTube Help’s page on managing a channel profile explains how to change the description and add translations of it, but gives no number of its own.
Two more channel limits are worth knowing. Channel keywords share 500 characters in total, and the API notes that “the 500 character limit is not a per-keyword limit”. A handle takes 3 to 30 characters, except in Han and Hangul (1 to 10) and in Hiragana, Katakana and Ethiopic (2 to 20). YouTube lets you change your channel name and your handle twice in any 14-day period.
How does PostNext check YouTube limits before scheduling?
PostNext checks YouTube’s own limits when you schedule a video, so a title, description or tag list that YouTube would refuse is flagged before the upload. The title must be 100 characters or fewer with no < or >. The description is counted in bytes against 5,000, the way the API counts it. Tags are counted against 500 with the commas and the quotes around tags with spaces included.
YouTube in PostNext is open to a limited set of accounts while Google reviews the app. A YouTube post in PostNext also needs exactly one video, a title and an answer to whether the video is made for kids. YouTube’s help page on uploading says the answer is required to comply with the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The YouTube scheduler page covers the rest: placing the video on the calendar, the posting-slot queue, and the AI assistant that drafts titles, descriptions and tags for you to edit. For Shorts in YouTube’s own tools, see our guide to scheduling YouTube Shorts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the character limit for a YouTube title?
100 characters. YouTube Studio stops a title at 100, and the YouTube Data API refuses a longer one. A title cannot contain the < or > signs. YouTube Shorts follow the same 100-character limit.
What is the YouTube description character limit?
5,000. YouTube Help says 5,000 characters, while the YouTube Data API counts 5,000 bytes. English text takes one byte per character, so the two match. Accented letters take two bytes and Chinese, Japanese or Korean three, so a description sent through an upload tool fits fewer of them.
How many characters can YouTube tags have?
500 in total, across all tags. The commas between tags count toward the 500, and a tag with a space in it counts two more for the quotation marks YouTube adds. YouTube says tags play a minimal role in discovery, mostly helping with commonly misspelled topics.
Do YouTube Shorts have a different title limit?
No. YouTube’s help pages on uploading and creating Shorts say a Short’s title holds up to 100 characters, the same as any video. The description and tag limits are the same too.
How long can a YouTube channel description be?
1,000 characters, according to the YouTube Data API’s channel resource. Channel keywords have a separate limit of 500 characters in total, and a handle takes 3 to 30 characters.
Related reading
- How Long Can YouTube Shorts Be? The 3-Minute Rule
- How to Schedule YouTube Shorts in Studio and the App
- Threads Character Limit: Posts, Attachments, Tags
- Bluesky Character Limit for Posts, Bios and More
Sources
- YouTube Data API reference, Videos resource (title, description, tags, made for kids) and Channels resource (channel description, keywords), last updated 15 October 2026 (read October 2026)
- YouTube Help, Edit video settings (October 2026)
- YouTube Help, Tips for video descriptions (October 2026)
- YouTube Help, Upload YouTube Shorts and Get started creating YouTube Shorts (October 2026)
- YouTube Help, Add tags to your YouTube videos (October 2026)
- YouTube Help, Find playlists & videos using hashtags (October 2026)
- YouTube Help, Manage your YouTube channel’s profile and Learn about YouTube handles (October 2026)
- PostNext, postnext.io/youtube-scheduler (October 2026)
