Snapchat publishing is media-first in a way most platforms aren’t. Every format requires a photo or video, captions are very short, and the three post types behave quite differently.
The three formats
Through BulkPublish, Snapchat supports:
| Format | What it is |
|---|---|
| Story | The standard ephemeral post |
| Saved Story | A Story kept on the profile rather than expiring |
| Spotlight | Submitted to Snapchat’s discovery surface |
All three require media. There’s no text-only Snapchat post.
What Snapchat accepts
| Caption length | 160 characters |
| Images | 1 per post, up to 20 MB, JPG or PNG |
| Video | Up to 1 GB and 60 seconds, MP4 or MOV |
160 characters is the tightest caption limit of any platform we publish to, by a distance. X allows 280. Snapchat allows 160.
This is the single most important thing to plan around. If you’re cross-posting, the Snapchat version has to be written separately or it will be cut. Trimming a 500-character Threads post to 160 isn’t trimming, it’s rewriting.
One image per post. No carousels, no image sets. If you have several images, that’s several posts.
Vertical, or nothing
Snapchat is a full-screen vertical platform. A landscape or square video technically uploads and then looks wrong, with the content floating in a letterboxed band.
If your video was shot for YouTube or a feed, it needs a vertical export before it goes to Snapchat. Cropping in the tool isn’t the answer, because cropping a landscape video to 9:16 cuts most of the frame away.
The good news: vertical video made for TikTok, Reels or Shorts is already the right shape, which is why those four tend to travel together.
Scheduling one
- Connect your Snapchat account
- Choose the format: Story, Saved Story or Spotlight
- Attach the media, vertical
- Write a caption inside 160 characters
- Pick a date and time and queue it
Caption length and media rules are checked before the post is queued, so an over-length caption or a file in the wrong format is caught in the composer.
Which format to use
Story for the everyday: it’s ephemeral by design and the audience expects that.
Saved Story for anything you want to remain findable on the profile. Worth using more than most accounts do, because a Story that disappears has no long tail at all.
Spotlight for content genuinely made to be discovered by people who don’t follow you. It’s a different intent from a Story to your existing audience, and posting the same thing to both rarely works well.
Snapchat in a cross-posting set
The natural group is Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Same vertical video, four destinations.
The captions are the part that doesn’t travel. Snapchat’s 160 characters is far below the others, so plan for a purpose-written short caption there rather than a truncated one.
BulkPublish publishes to Snapchat and 14 other networks: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, Threads, Bluesky, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Discord, Telegram and Tumblr.
- Channels: Free: 3 (1 per platform). Pro: 30 (2 per platform). Business: 75 (5 per platform).
- Posts: Free: 3/day. Pro: 30/day. Business: unlimited.
- Storage: Free: 100 MB. Pro: 2 GB. Business: 10 GB.
The short version
Everything on Snapchat needs media, video should be vertical, and captions cap at 160 characters, which is the tightest limit anywhere in a normal cross-posting set. Use Saved Stories more than you probably do, keep Spotlight for content actually made for discovery, and write the Snapchat caption rather than truncating another one.