Reddit is where a lazy title goes to die at zero upvotes. The platform's actual character limits are generous — far more generous than most social platforms — but almost nobody writes well at those lengths, and the feed refuses to display them anyway. Here is the complete map of Reddit's limits as of 2026, plus the practical craft: writing titles that survive the card view and the moderators.
The hard limits, as of 2026
Three numbers cover almost everything you will post: 300 characters for a post title, 40,000 for a text-post body, and 10,000 for a comment. All three count every character — spaces, punctuation, and Markdown formatting symbols included, so the asterisks that make your bold text bold are spending your budget too. These caps have been stable for years; Reddit changes its product far more often than its limits.
Reddit's limits by surface
The full table, with the display reality next to the hard cap:
| Surface | Hard limit | What the feed actually shows |
|---|---|---|
| Post title | 300 characters | ~2 lines before visual truncation |
| Text-post body | 40,000 characters | First few lines, then "Read More" |
| Comment | 10,000 characters | Collapsed threads hide long replies |
| Link post URL | Not counted in the title | Rendered as a preview card |
Note the pattern: on every surface, the hard limit and the useful limit are different numbers. Writing to the hard limit is legal; writing to the display limit is what gets read.
The feed cuts titles long before 300 characters
In Reddit's card and list views, a title renders on roughly two lines before it is visually truncated — call it 100 characters on a desktop card, fewer on a phone, with the full text only visible after the click. That has two practical consequences. First, the information that decides whether anyone clicks must live in the first ~80 characters; everything after that is bonus context for people already interested. Second, a title that runs to 250+ characters reads, from the feed, like a wall of ellipsis-terminated text — and readers parse "long" as "effort" before they parse a single word of it.
A sensible working rule: keep titles under about 120 characters, with the substance in the first 80. You will almost never wish you had used more.
Text posts and comments: the roomy limits
The 40,000-character text-post budget is roughly 6,000 words — long enough for a genuine essay, a full trip report, or an exhaustive technical write-up, and some of Reddit's most upvoted posts ever are exactly that. Two habits make long bodies work. First, put a tl;dr at the top: the feed shows only the first few lines before "Read More", so the summary earns the click the same way a title does. Second, remember that Markdown spends characters — headers, bullets, and bold markers all count toward the 40,000, though you would have to try hard to hit the ceiling.
Comments cap at 10,000 characters, which sounds generous until you notice how the interface treats length: long comments render fully but compete for attention in collapsed threads, where readers skim rather than study. The reliable pattern is the same one titles teach — state the answer in the first sentence, then let the reasoning run as long as the question deserves.
Subreddit rules are often tighter than Reddit's
The sitewide limit is the loosest constraint you face. Individual subreddits layer their own rules on top, enforced by AutoModerator and human moderators: required flair, mandated title formats like [Discussion] or [OC] prefixes, banned phrases and clickbait words, question-only titles, or megathreads that redirect popular topics into a single weekly post where your standalone contribution will be removed. Every prefix character you are required to include comes out of the same 300 — and out of the same ~80 visible characters. Reading a subreddit's rules before posting is the difference between a post that lives and a removal notice; the effective character limit is always the subreddit's, not Reddit's.
Writing titles that survive the feed cut
- Front-load the subject. Who or what, in the first 80 characters — a title should pass the "cold read" test with everything after character 80 deleted.
- Be specific with numbers and outcomes. "Cut my essay from 1,200 to 850 words — method inside" beats "How I improved my essay" on every measure.
- Match the subreddit's idiom. Question titles in advice communities, tag formats where required, and no withholding clickbait — Reddit punishes "you won't believe" harder than any platform.
- Check your length as you draft. Paste the candidate title into the WordlyCount character counter and read everything before character 80 as if the rest were gone.
Title craft is now a cross-platform skill with different numbers on each surface — the tight caps covered in Twitter/X's character limit and the fold-based truncation in Facebook's post character limit reward the exact same front-loading habit, at different lengths.