Answer
How long can a LinkedIn post be?
Quick answer
A LinkedIn post can hold up to 3,000 characters. Anything longer belongs in a LinkedIn article, which allows up to 125,000.
What it's not
The limit is not a target. It tells you how much fits, not how much people will read, and most of a post's work is done by the lines shown before the feed cuts it off.
LinkedIn states it plainly: “The character limit for a post is 3,000 characters” (LinkedIn Help: Post and share updates). For anything longer, LinkedIn offers articles, which it describes as “typically longer than posts” and “limited to 125,000 characters” (LinkedIn Help: posts and articles).
Post or article?
The two formats do different jobs. A post goes into your connections’ feeds, which is where most reading on LinkedIn happens. An article is a longer, structured piece with its own page, better suited to a reference you want to link to later, such as a hiring process or a post-mortem. If what you have to say runs past 3,000 characters, it is worth asking whether it is one post that is too long or an article that deserves headings.
What the number means in practice
Three thousand characters is several paragraphs, more than most readers will give a post in a feed. In the feed, a long post is shown truncated, so the opening lines carry most of the weight; the hook is where length decisions actually get made. A common working approach is to write the post at whatever length the idea needs, then cut until every paragraph earns its place, rather than aiming at the limit.
When you draft for more than one network at once, the limits diverge sharply. The same idea that fills a comfortable LinkedIn post has to be rewritten, not trimmed, to fit the 280 characters of a standard post on X. See how long a post on X can be.
Related questions
How long can a LinkedIn article be?
LinkedIn limits articles to 125,000 characters, according to its help page on the differences between posts and articles.
Can a company page post longer updates than a personal profile?
LinkedIn's help pages give 3,000 characters as the limit for a post and do not list a different limit for Pages.
Should a LinkedIn post use all 3,000 characters?
Only when the content needs them. A post is read from the top, and a long post that loses the reader in its second paragraph does less than a short one they finish.