Bluesky Character Counter

Bluesky character limits at a glance (verified August 2026)

A Bluesky post holds 300 characters, counted as grapheme clusters, with a parallel cap of 3,000 UTF-8 bytes. The post record enforces both. Replies and quote posts are the same record type, so they share the same 300-character limit. These figures come straight from the AT Protocol post lexicon, last checked August 2026.

On profiles: the display name allows 64 characters (640 bytes) and the bio 256 characters (2,560 bytes). Handles can run to 253 characters in total with 63 per dot-separated segment, but 244 is the recommended ceiling so the DNS verification prefix still fits. The handle spec is explicit about that.

Beyond the basics: image alt text allows 2,000 characters (a cap set in the official app itself), direct messages allow 1,000 characters (10,000 bytes) each, and a post can carry up to 8 additional tags of 64 characters apiece plus 3 language tags. You can attach 4 images per post; the app compresses each to a maximum of 2000px and roughly 1MB.

Two limits almost nobody mentions: the official app blocks posts longer than 25 lines, so a heavily line-broken post can be rejected well under 300 characters, and in-app drafts stop at 1,000 characters. The generous 2,000-character alt-text field is worth using. Descriptive alt text makes your images accessible to screen-reader users at no cost to your post count.

How Bluesky actually counts characters

The 300 limit is measured in grapheme clusters (what you perceive as one character), not in bytes or code points. That means any emoji counts as 1, including multi-codepoint sequences: the family emoji 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 is one character to Bluesky even though it is built from several joined code points and weighs about 25 bytes.

Those bytes are the catch. The post record also enforces a 3,000-byte UTF-8 cap in parallel, so an emoji-heavy post can be rejected while the visible count still reads under 300. Roughly 300 complex emoji is enough to trip the byte limit first. A trustworthy check watches both numbers, which is why this page spells out the byte rule instead of pretending 300 is the whole story.

One debunk while we are at it: the Bluesky blog post announcing a new "299" character limit was dated April 1, 2025. It was an April Fools joke that still surfaces in search results. The real limit is 300, and it has not changed as of August 2026.

Do links count? The real math

Links count, but at their shortened length: not their full length, and not a flat rate. The official Bluesky app shortens every link before counting. It strips the https:// scheme and keeps the domain plus the path, and if the path runs past 15 characters it keeps the first 13 and appends "...". So https://example.com/very/long/path/to/page counts as example.com/very/long/pat..., which is 27 characters. A link’s cost is the domain length plus at most 16 characters of path, so it varies by domain.

This is the fact most counters get wrong, in one of two directions: charging every URL a flat 22 characters, or charging the full URL length. Both contradict the official app’s source code, which counts the shortened form against the 300 limit. Verified August 2026.

Hashtags and mentions have no such discount. A hashtag costs its full visible length (#photography is 12 characters), and a mention costs the length of the @handle you type. Only links get the shortening treatment.

The link rule also explains a common failure: third-party clients and schedulers that submit text over the raw API without shortening pay the full URL length, so a post that fits in the official app can be rejected elsewhere. If a post fails while showing under 300, an unshortened URL or the 3,000-byte cap is almost always the reason.

Over 300? How to split into a thread

There is no way to exceed 300 characters in a single post. The limit lives in the protocol, not the app, so every client is bound by it. A request to raise it to 500 sits as an open feature request with no committed change as of August 2026. Trimming and threading are the real options.

Trim first: cut throat-clearing openers, collapse duplicate phrases, and let the link shortening work for you by dropping tracking parameters you don’t need. Short posts are not a consolation prize either. One 2026 analysis of Bluesky engagement puts the sweet spot at 150 to 220 characters, well under the cap.

When the idea genuinely needs more room, split at sentence boundaries rather than mid-thought, number the parts (1/4, 2/4) so readers can follow, and keep each part under 300 characters and 25 lines. If you thread regularly, JuzPost’s composer lets you write, split and schedule Bluesky threads in one place. This counter is the free, no-signup slice of it.