LinkedIn quietly enforces a different character limit on nearly every surface — and almost none of them display everything they allow. The headline field accepts 220 characters but often shows 70–110. Posts accept 3,000 but fold after roughly 210. The About section takes 2,600; connection notes barely take two sentences. Here's the full map, as of 2026, plus where the display cuts are hiding.
The short answer
The numbers to memorize: posts 3,000 characters, headline 220, About section 2,600, comments 1,250, connection notes roughly 200–300 depending on account type, and experience descriptions 2,000. Every one of those is a hard limit, not a display width — the display usually cuts sooner, which is the part that quietly ruins carefully crafted copy.
LinkedIn character limits by surface
Every field you're likely to write in, side by side with how much of it people actually see.
| Surface | Limit | Display reality |
|---|---|---|
| Feed post | 3,000 characters | Folds after ~210–220 characters |
| Headline | 220 characters | Often truncated to ~70–110 on mobile |
| About / summary | 2,600 characters | Folds after ~3–4 lines |
| Comment | 1,250 characters | Full text shown |
| Connection note | ~200–300 characters | Whole note shows in the invite |
| Experience description | 2,000 characters | Folds after ~2–3 lines |
| Newsletter / article headline | ~150 characters | Full in most surfaces |
Headlines: 220 characters, but write for 70
The 220-character headline is prime real estate — it follows you under your name on every post, comment, and search result. But mobile profiles and search results frequently truncate it to roughly 70–110 characters. The fix is front-loading: current title first, then the value or specialty, then any flourish. "Head of Growth | I help B2B SaaS teams build repeatable pipelines" survives truncation; "Changing the world one connection at a time" wastes even the pixels it gets.
A reliable three-part formula: role, then what you do, then proof — "Demand Gen Lead | I build pipelines for B2B SaaS | 3 exits, 1 IPO". Each pipe-separated chunk can be cut by the display without the sentence collapsing, which is exactly the resilience truncation demands. Update it when your positioning changes, not when you happen to remember; recruiters see the stale version for months.
Recruiters add the hard constraint: they search LinkedIn by keyword, and the headline is weighted heavily in that search. The words a recruiter would actually type — your role, your stack, your industry — belong in the first half of the field, not buried behind a mission statement. It's the same calculation as where a LinkedIn post folds: the visible window is smaller than the field, so the front carries the weight.
The About section: 2,600 characters, same fold
About gives you room for a real narrative — 2,600 characters, about 400 words — and the first three to four lines show before a See more link. Lead with the conclusion: what you do, for whom, and what's different about how you do it. Proof points, the career story, and a closing call to action can follow below the fold, where the interested readers — the only ones this section is written for — actually go.
Two practical notes: the opening lines of About are also what tends to surface in search results for your profile, and About text is searchable on LinkedIn itself. Keywords placed naturally in the first lines serve both. Write in first person, keep paragraphs to a few lines so the fold lands between ideas rather than mid-sentence, and put your contact preference at the very end — anyone scrolling that far wants it.
Length discipline helps here as much as anywhere: 2,600 characters is permission, not a quota. Many strong About sections run 150–250 words and stop — enough for positioning, proof, and a call to action, with nothing an interested reader has to forgive. The common failure isn't writing too little; it's pasting a résumé nobody scrolls.
Everything else: comments, notes, and long-form
Comments run to 1,250 characters — generous, and a genuine distribution lever, because a substantive comment on someone else's post introduces you to every reader of that thread. Connection notes are the tightest box: roughly 200–300 characters depending on account, as of 2026. A good note says who you are and why them, in two lines; generic templates get ignored at any length. Long-form articles and newsletters live in a separate editor with a ~150-character headline and effectively unlimited body — that's the lane for when a post truly needs 1,500 words, and using it keeps your feed posts tight.
A note on decay: these fields go stale quietly. The headline you wrote for your last role keeps representing you in every search result and comment thread until you change it, and an About section that still describes 2023 reads as neglect. Calendar a quarterly pass over the three fields recruiters and prospects actually see — headline, About, and experience one-liners.
Before any of it ships, the same check saves rework: draft in the WordlyCount counter and watch the character count against each field's real budget — 220 for the headline, 200–300 for a note — because LinkedIn's editors rarely warn you before the display cuts you off. The identical length discipline applies to subject line length in the outreach emails that usually accompany a connection request.