Facebook and Instagram Ad Character Limits
Meta does not stop you writing a long headline, it just quietly cuts it off where nobody sees the end. Type your ad below and watch where each placement truncates it. Nothing you type ever leaves your browser.
How it lands
Type your ad copy on the left and it gets counted here.
| Field | Facebook Feed | Instagram Feed |
|---|---|---|
| Primary text | 50 to 150 | 125 |
| Headline | 27 | 40 |
| Description | Not published | 30 |
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What this tool does
Nearly every article about Facebook ad character limits repeats the same three numbers: 125, 40, 30. Those numbers are real. They are Instagram Feed's numbers. Meta's own ads guide recommends a 27 character headline for Facebook Feed, and a primary text range of 50 to 150 rather than a flat 125.
So the advice everyone repeats is right for one placement and wrong for the other, which is why people write a 38 character headline, see it fit perfectly in the Instagram preview, and never find out it was clipped in the Facebook feed where most of their budget went.
The second thing worth knowing is that these are recommendations, not limits. Meta will happily accept a 300 character headline. The field will not stop you, nothing will turn red, and no error will appear. It just gets cut, and you find out from your click through rate rather than from a warning.
This counts your text against each placement's actual published recommendation and shows you exactly where the cut lands. It is free, there is no signup, and the whole thing runs in your browser.
How to write ad copy that does not get cut
The rule that matters is not a character count, it is where you put the point.
- 1Put the whole offer in the first lineWrite as if the reader will see one sentence, because on a phone they will. If your hook needs the second paragraph to make sense, the ad does not have a second paragraph.
- 2Check the placement you actually spend onSwitch the placement above and watch the headline verdict change. Facebook Feed recommends 27 characters and Instagram Feed recommends 40, so the same headline can be fine in one preview and clipped in the other.
- 3Treat the recommendation as a hint, not a wallNothing stops you going over. Meta accepts it and truncates it, which is worse than rejecting it, because you never find out. The counter here is the warning Meta does not give you.
- 4Watch out for emojisOne emoji can cost more than one character depending on how it is counted, and a flag or a skin tone emoji is worse. This tool counts by code point, which is closer to what you see, but emojis in a 27 character headline are expensive.
- 5Look at the real preview before you publishAds Manager shows a preview per placement. Use it. This tool tells you the cut is coming, and the preview shows you what it actually looks like on the placement you are buying.
Why everyone quotes the wrong numbers
If you have read three articles about this and they all said 125, 40, and 30, here is what happened.
- 1Those are Instagram Feed's numbersPrimary text 125, headline 40, description 30. All correct, all published by Meta, all for Instagram Feed.
- 2Facebook Feed's are differentMeta's ads guide gives Facebook Feed a headline recommendation of 27 characters and a primary text range of 50 to 150. Not the same tool, not the same numbers.
- 3The articles copy each otherOne set of numbers got written up as the Facebook ad character limits and everything since has copied it. It is not malice, it is that nobody goes back to the guide.
- 4So check the placement, not the platformThere is no such thing as the Facebook ad character limit. There is a recommendation per placement, and Feed, Stories, Reels, and the rest do not agree with each other.
What this counter tells you, and what it does not
It is a character counter. That sounds trivial and it is genuinely useful, and it is worth knowing where it stops.
What this counter tells you
- Which placement you are about to annoyThe same headline passes on Instagram and clips on Facebook. That difference is invisible in most previews and it is the single most useful thing here.
- Where the cut landsNot just that you are over, but which words fall behind See more. Usually that is where you put the reason to click.
- Meta's real published numbersRead off the ads guide rather than copied from a blog, with the date we read them on the page so you can judge how stale they are.
- Emojis honestlyCounted by code point rather than by JavaScript's string length, which counts most emojis as two. One glyph, one character, which is what you actually see.
What it cannot tell you
- Whether the copy is any goodThis is the big one. A perfectly sized headline that says nothing is worse than a slightly clipped one that makes someone want to click.
- Every placement except the two hereStories, Reels, right column, Marketplace, Audience Network. All different, none of them here, because we only publish numbers we checked.
- The exact truncation pointMeta does not publish it and it moves with device width, font size, and whatever they shipped last week. The preview here is close, not exact.
- Whether the ad will be approvedLength is not a policy. A 27 character headline can still get you rejected, which is a different tool on this site.
- Combined emojiA family emoji or a flag is several code points glued together, so it can count as more than one even here. Nothing counts these the way a human does.
- What happens after the clickThe copy gets them there. The comment section under the ad decides whether they trust it, and no counter has anything to say about that.
Writing the ad vs Sweep Inbox
Different jobs entirely, and we are not going to pretend a character counter and a moderation tool are competing. Here is the split.
| This counter | Sweep Inbox | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, no signup | Paid, with a 7 day free trial |
| What it works on | The ad copy you write | The comments strangers write underneath it |
| When | Before you publish | Every second after |
| Who controls it | You. It is your copy | Anyone with an account, until something is watching |
| What it costs you to ignore | A clipped headline | The impressions you already paid for |
Questions people actually ask
- There is no single number, and that is the honest answer. Meta publishes a recommendation per placement, and they disagree. Meta's ads guide gives Facebook Feed a 27 character headline recommendation and a 50 to 150 primary text range. Instagram Feed gets 125 primary text, 40 headline, 30 description. The 125 / 40 / 30 that everyone quotes for Facebook is actually Instagram's set.
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Open toolYou control every character of the ad. Then it goes live.
You will spend an hour getting the headline right, and a scam reply written in four seconds sits underneath it. Connect your pages and let Sweep Inbox deal with that half.
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