Threads is unusually well documented for a young platform, because Meta shipped a public API early and put the numbers in it. Posts are 500 characters. Carousels take up to 20 items, twice what Instagram allows. Video runs to 5 minutes. And there is a hard cap of 250 published posts per 24 hours.
Threads posting limits
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Text post | 500 characters |
| Published posts | 250 per rolling 24 hours |
| Carousel items | 2 to 20 images, videos, or a mix |
| Links in a text post | 5 unique links |
| Video duration | Up to 5 minutes |
| Video file size | 1 GB |
| Video containers | MOV or MP4, HEVC or H.264 |
| Video frame rate | 23 to 60 fps |
| Video aspect ratio | 0.01:1 to 10:1, 9:16 recommended |
| Image file size | 8 MB |
| Image formats | JPEG or PNG, sRGB |
| Image width | 320 to 1440 pixels |
| Image aspect ratio | Up to 10:1 |
| Profile discovery API requests | 1,000 per rolling 24 hours |
Note: Figures here were verified against Meta’s Threads API documentation (posts and media reference) as of September 2026. Platforms change these without notice.
A carousel counts as one post against the 250 per day, so the practical ceiling on media is much higher than the post count suggests.
Emoji count against the 500 characters by UTF-8 byte length rather than as single characters, which is why a post full of emoji runs out of room sooner than the visible character count implies. The Threads character counter counts the way Threads does. The full field-by-field breakdown is in Threads character limit.
The 20-item carousel
This is the most useful Threads limit and the least known. Instagram, from the same company, caps carousels at 10. Threads takes 20, with a minimum of 2. If you are cross-posting a long photo set, Threads is the surface that will take all of it.
The five link rule
Text-only posts accept a maximum of five unique links. This is a spam control rather than a formatting rule, and it is the sort of limit that only shows up when a scheduled post fails, because nobody writes a six-link post by accident until they are automating a digest.
What Threads does not publish
Follows per day, likes per hour, replies per hour, and the thresholds for rate-limiting an account are not documented. Threads inherits Instagram’s account infrastructure, and its enforcement behaves like Instagram’s:
- Account age and the linked Instagram account’s standing both feed in. A Threads account attached to a restricted Instagram account starts from a worse position.
- Report and block rate shrinks headroom, and it does so fastest for replies to accounts that do not follow you.
- Burst speed is treated separately from daily volume.
Any published figure for Threads follows or likes per day is reported and unofficial, and Threads is young enough that the enforcement is still visibly changing. The 250 posts per 24 hours cap above is the only publishing number Meta actually states, and it applies to API publishing.
Threads compared to its neighbours
| Platform | Post length | Video max | Gallery max |
|---|---|---|---|
| Threads | 500 | 5 minutes | 20 |
| 2,200 | 15 minutes (Reels) | 10 | |
| Bluesky | 300 | Short clips | Small image set |
| X | 280 standard | 20 minutes standard | Small image set |
| Mastodon | 500 typical | Varies by server | Varies by server |
Note: The Threads and Instagram figures were verified against Meta’s developer documentation, and the X figures against docs.x.com, as of September 2026. Bluesky and Mastodon vary by server or client and are given as typical values.
The short version
- 500 characters, counted by UTF-8 bytes for emoji.
- 250 published posts per rolling 24 hours.
- Carousels of 2 to 20 items, counting as one post.
- Video up to 5 minutes and 1 GB. Images up to 8 MB.
- Maximum 5 unique links in a text post.
- Follow and like limits are undocumented and inherited from Instagram’s enforcement.
Scheduling Threads posts
BulkPublish publishes to Threads through Meta’s official API, so the 500-character cap and the 20-item carousel are enforced in the composer rather than discovered at publish time. Threads and Bluesky are close enough in shape that people usually run them together, and cross-posting Threads to Bluesky covers the 500 against 300 character gap that trips most of those setups.
What counts toward the 500 characters
Links count in full, and Threads does not shorten them for counting purposes, so a long URL takes a real bite out of a 500-character post. Mentions count. Line breaks count. Emoji count by UTF-8 byte length, so a single emoji can consume several characters of your allowance and a skin-tone or flag emoji consumes more again.
This is the practical reason a Threads post that looked comfortable in a text editor is rejected by the API. The editor counted characters, Threads counted bytes.