TikTok publishes very little about its limits, and the parts it does publish live in the developer documentation rather than the help centre. The caption cap is 2,200 characters. Video duration is not a single fixed number: the API returns a maximum per creator, and it varies by account. Everything about follows, likes, and comments per day is undocumented.
TikTok posting limits that are documented
| Limit | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Caption / title | 2,200 UTF-16 runes | Content Posting API reference |
| Max video duration for API posts | Returned per creator as max_video_post_duration_sec (300 in TikTok’s own example) | Content Posting API |
| API requests per access token | 6 per minute | Content Posting API reference |
| Upload URL validity | 1 hour after issue | Content Posting API |
| Posts by unaudited apps | Forced to private viewing mode | Content Posting API |
Note: Figures here were verified against TikTok’s Content Posting API documentation as of September 2026. Platforms change these without notice.
The per-creator duration value is the useful detail. TikTok does not hand every account the same ceiling, so a tool that hardcodes one number will reject videos some accounts could post and accept videos others cannot. The correct behaviour is to query the creator info endpoint first, which is what the API is designed for.
For the caption itself, including how emoji and links count, see TikTok character limit and the TikTok character counter.
What we could not verify about TikTok video length
TikTok’s help centre blocks automated fetching, so we could not confirm the in-app upload ceiling from a first-party page in this session. Longer uploads (well past ten minutes) have been rolled out in stages to different account types over several years, which is exactly the kind of figure that goes stale. What we can say with a source behind it is the API value above.
If your video is going out through a scheduler, the API value is the one that actually governs whether it publishes. See how long a TikTok video can be for the fuller version of this question.
The private-by-default rule for unaudited apps
This one causes more confused support tickets than any other TikTok limit. Any app that has not passed TikTok’s Content Posting API audit can publish, but every post it publishes is forced to private viewing mode. The post exists, it appears in the account, and nobody else can see it. It is not a bug in the scheduling tool, and no setting in the tool can override it, because the restriction is applied on TikTok’s side.
If your scheduled TikToks are landing as private, the question to ask your tool’s vendor is whether their TikTok app is audited.
TikTok action limits: nobody has the numbers
TikTok does not publish follows per day, likes per hour, comments per hour, or DM limits. It has never published them, and the community figures you will find are reverse-engineered from people getting blocked, which measures where one account hit a ceiling on one day rather than where the ceiling is.
The mechanism appears to be the same family of adaptive throttling every large platform runs:
- Account age and standing. A new account gets a much lower allowance than one with a posting history.
- Complaint signal. Being blocked, reported, or having comments removed reduces headroom quickly.
- Timing pattern. Actions at machine-regular intervals are trivially detectable, and are treated worse than the same volume at irregular human intervals.
- Content history. Accounts with prior violations sit closer to the edge on everything else.
TikTok’s own enforcement messaging reflects this. It does not tell you a number when it blocks you, it tells you to try again later, which is what an adaptive system says because there is no static number to quote.
Treat any specific per-day figure you see for TikTok as unofficial and unverified, including the ones that are stated with total confidence. We are not repeating them here.
What this means for scheduling
The 6 requests per minute per token limit is generous for publishing and restrictive for anything chatty. A scheduler posting a handful of videos a day never approaches it. A tool polling for status every few seconds across many accounts on one token will.
Rate limits across every network we support, and what happens when they are hit, are collected in social media API rate limits.
The short version
- Caption: 2,200 UTF-16 runes.
- Video length via the API: whatever the creator info endpoint returns for that account. TikTok’s documented example is 300 seconds.
- 6 API requests per minute per user token.
- Unaudited apps publish private-only posts. This is a platform rule, not a tool bug.
- Follow, like, and comment limits are undocumented and adaptive. No published number exists.
Scheduling TikTok without guessing at the caps
BulkPublish posts to TikTok through the audited Content Posting API and reads the per-creator duration and privacy options from TikTok before queueing, rather than assuming a fixed limit. That means a video too long for your specific account is caught in the composer instead of failing hours later at publish time.
If you also publish the same vertical video elsewhere, posting to TikTok, Reels and Shorts at once covers the per-platform differences that actually bite.