What is the maximum number of characters allowed in a tweet on Twitter as of 2023? The maximum was 280 characters.
Twitter introduced the 280-character limit in November 2017, replacing the original 140-character cap for most languages. The company said the expansion was intended to give users more room to express complete thoughts without making posts substantially harder to read.
The older 140-character limit came from the constraints of SMS messaging, which influenced Twitter’s early design. Although tweets could include links and media, text space was once tightly restricted. Twitter later rebranded as X in 2023, but the standard short-post limit remained 280 characters.
The number is not universal across every posting format. Certain subscription, advertising or long-form features may allow longer text, and characters in some scripts are counted differently under Twitter’s language-aware system. For the ordinary tweet described by this question, however, 280 is the canonical answer.