How many hashtags should you use on TikTok?

The limits, app by app

• TikTok: captions up to 4,000 characters in the app. Apps that post for you through TikTok's posting tools are often held to 2,200. Many users now get a pop-up when they add a sixth hashtag (Social Media Today, August 2025).
• Instagram: captions up to 2,200 characters, with about the first 125 shown before "more". Five hashtags at most per post or Reel, rolling out since December 2025.
• YouTube Shorts: titles up to 100 characters, descriptions up to 5,000. If a video has more than 60 hashtags, YouTube ignores all of them.

What hashtags actually do

Hashtags help TikTok and Instagram understand what your post is about, and they help people who search find it. They don't push a post to more people by themselves. Instagram's head, Adam Mosseri, has said this directly: hashtags help people find you, but don't add reach.

What brings reach is people watching, saving and sharing your post. So spend your time on the first line and the post itself, and treat hashtags as labels.

How to pick your 3 to 5

1. 1

   Step 1: One for what it is

   Your product type or topic, the way people would search it: #budgetapp, #sourdough, #smallbusiness.

2. 2

   Step 2: One for who it's for

   The group you want to reach: #newmom, #freelancer, #indiehacker.

3. 3

   Step 3: One for the problem

   What your post helps with: #mealprep, #studytips, #productivity.

4. 4

   Step 4: Maybe one for the place

   If you sell locally, your town or area: #austinbakery, #nyceats.

5. 5

   Step 5: Maybe one for the format

   If it fits, like #tiktoktips or #lifehack. Skip #fyp and #viral: everyone uses them, so they tell TikTok nothing about your post.

Instagram and YouTube Shorts

On Instagram, the same 3 to 5 rule works, and five is now the hard limit. Put the hashtags in the caption, not a comment, so they stay with the post. Keep the first line of the caption short, since only about 125 characters show before "more".

On YouTube Shorts, the title does most of the work. Write it the way people would search, short enough to read at a glance, because long titles get cut off in the Shorts feed. Add two or three hashtags in the description. YouTube ignores every hashtag on a video that has more than 60.

Check a hashtag before you use it

• Search it on TikTok. Look at the top posts. If they're nothing like yours, it's the wrong tag.
• Skip giant tags. A tag with billions of posts buries yours in seconds.
• Skip tags with nothing in them. If nobody posts with it, nobody searches it either.
• Never use a trending tag that has nothing to do with your post. It confuses who your post gets shown to.

Plain words help people find you too

People search TikTok the way they search Google: "easy sourdough for beginners", "best budget app", "what to pack for Japan". Plain words in your caption and in the text on screen help your post show up for those searches, often more than a hashtag does.

So say what the post is in plain words once, early in the caption. "3 sourdough mistakes I made as a beginner" tells TikTok and searchers more than #sourdough #baking #fyp ever could.

Write the caption first, then add hashtags

The caption sits under your post, and the first line is all most people read. Write it like a text to a friend: "save this for your next grocery run", or a real question. Metricool found a question in a TikTok caption got 26% more comments, while asking for likes got 60% fewer likes.

Then put your 3 to 5 hashtags at the end. They count toward the character limit, so long captions plus many tags can get cut off.

• "which one surprised you most? 👀 #caloriecounting #healthyeating #mealprep"

  A question, then three tags about what, who and the problem.

• "save this for launch day 📌 #indiehacker #appmarketing #startup #buildinpublic"

  A friendly nudge to save, then four tags for the people it's for.