How long a message can be on Telegram, Discord, X and SMS, straight from each platform’s own documentation, with a checker for your own text.
Too long? The text repeater's Split for option cuts any text into parts that fit, using these same limits.
| Platform | Limit | Rule | Official source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Telegram | 4,096 | 1–4,096 characters per message | Telegram Bot API — sendMessage | 31 October 2026 |
| Discord | 2,000 | 2,000 characters per message | Discord Support — Account Caps, Server Caps and More | 31 October 2026 |
| Discord (Nitro) | 4,000 | 4,000 characters per message with Nitro | Discord Support — Account Caps, Server Caps and More | 31 October 2026 |
| X (Twitter) | 280 weighted | 280 weighted characters; emoji, CJK and most non-Latin characters count as 2 | X Developer Platform — Counting characters | 31 October 2026 |
| SMS | 160 | 160 GSM-7 characters or 70 Unicode characters per single SMS (153 / 67 per part when split) | 3GPP TS 23.038 (alphabet) and TS 23.040 (140-octet message) | 31 October 2026 |
Every limit links to the platform's own documentation, or for SMS to the 3GPP standard that defines it. We don't copy figures from other "character limit" sites, because many of them repeat each other's numbers without a source.
Telegram's Bot API documents a message's text as 1–4096 characters after entities parsing. "After entities parsing" means formatting is applied first: the markup used to make text bold or italic doesn't count towards the 4,096, only the text that's actually shown.
Discord's support article on account caps lists the message length as 2,000 characters on a regular account and 4,000 with Nitro. Anything longer has to be split into several messages.
X counts characters by weight. Most Latin letters, digits and punctuation count as 1. Emoji (including combined emoji like 👩❤️👨), Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, and most other scripts count as 2. Links count as 23 whatever their real length. Text is normalised (NFC) before counting, so "café" counts as 4 however the é was typed. The checker above applies the character weights. It doesn't shorten links, so a post with links can show slightly more than X will count.
A single SMS carries 140 bytes. In the standard GSM-7 alphabet (Latin letters, digits and common punctuation) that's 160 characters; a few symbols such as € [ ] { } ~ ^ | \ take two slots. Use any character outside GSM-7, even one emoji, and the whole message switches to Unicode (UCS-2), which fits 70 characters. Longer texts are split into parts that phones join back together. Each part loses a few characters to joining information, so the per-part limit is 153 (GSM-7) or 67 (Unicode).
WhatsApp doesn't publish a maximum message length for normal chats, either in its Help Center or in Meta's developer documentation (checked 31 October 2026). Figures quoted elsewhere come from people's tests, not from WhatsApp, so we don't list one. If a very long WhatsApp message won't send, split it into a few smaller messages.
Each limit is stored with its source and the date we last checked it, and the same data drives the splitter in the text repeater. Platforms change their limits from time to time. If you spot a change, tell us and we'll re-check the source and update the date.
Text message character limits explained · message repeater · invisible character · text repeater with splitter
2,000 characters per message on a regular account, and 4,000 with Nitro, according to Discord's support article on account caps.
4,096 characters per message, counted after formatting is applied, according to Telegram's Bot API documentation.
280 weighted characters. Most Latin characters count as 1; emoji, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and most other scripts count as 2; links count as 23, per X's developer documentation.
160 characters in the standard GSM-7 alphabet, or 70 if the message contains any other character, such as an emoji. Longer messages are sent in parts of 153 or 67 characters.
Often, yes. X counts every emoji as 2. In an SMS, one emoji switches the whole message to Unicode, cutting the limit from 160 to 70. Telegram and Discord don't document how they count emoji, so the checker counts the way most software does (UTF-16), where a typical emoji takes 2 and combined emoji take more.
WhatsApp doesn't publish one for normal chats. We only list limits the platform itself documents, so WhatsApp isn't in the table.