Telegram post limits: 4096, 1024 and what to do about them
Where the message and caption limits come from, how characters are counted, and what happens to text that does not fit.
Two numbers trip up everyone who writes long: 4096 and 1024.
What they mean
4096 characters — a plain text message.
1024 characters — a caption on media. The moment you attach a photo or video the text becomes a caption and the limit drops fourfold. That is the usual surprise: the post fitted, you added a picture, it no longer fits.
How characters are counted
Not by letters but by UTF-16 code units — that is how Telegram counts. The practical difference: most emoji take two units, and composed ones (flags, families, skin-tone modifiers) take noticeably more. A post full of emoji hits the limit earlier than the visible character count suggests.
Formatting — bold, italics, links — does not count: Telegram stores it separately from the text. A ten-character link with a long URL costs ten characters, not the length of the address.
What to do with long text
Split into two messages. Simple, but the subscriber gets two notifications and the second reads poorly without the first.
Move it to an article. Telegraph or a website, with an announcement in the channel. Good for long reads, bad for something meant to be read at once.
A rich message. Telegram supports a format up to 32,768 characters with headings, tables and media inside. One post, one notification, everything inside Telegram.
How it works here
The counter counts the way Telegram does and warns in advance. If the text plus the channel signature does not fit, the post goes out as a rich message instead of being refused. See the features page.