Social media posting limits by platform
How many posts a day each platform allows, what its API allows, and where scheduling tools add a tighter safeguard of their own. On three of the nine platforms they add none. Pick a platform below, or compare the whole table.
Select a social media platform
Official limits vs safe operational scheduling limits
No published cap in the app. 100 posts per rolling 24h via the API.
50 posts per 24h, per account
Half of what Meta allows, on purpose. Instagram automated spam detection flags high-frequency bursts before daily volume limits are reached.
- API Limit
- 100 API-published posts / 24h (moving window), though the carousel section of the same doc says 50. Carousels count as one. Call content_publishing_limit to settle it for your account.
- Media Caps
- Carousel up to 10 items via the API. The app has been rolling out 20, unevenly. Image 8 MB. Video 300 MB, Reels to 15 min.
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Every figure below reflects official developer documentation or verified platform reference policies as of 2026. Where a platform publishes no limit, the cell indicates so rather than guessing.
| Platform | Platform's own limit | Published API limit | Media caps | Recommended scheduling cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Instagram | No published cap in the app. 100 posts per rolling 24h via the API. | 100 API-published posts / 24h (moving window), though the carousel section of the same doc says 50. Carousels count as one. Call content_publishing_limit to settle it for your account. | Carousel up to 10 items via the API. The app has been rolling out 20, unevenly. Image 8 MB. Video 300 MB, Reels to 15 min. | 50 posts per 24h, per account |
X (Twitter) | 50 original posts and 200 replies a day for unverified accounts, per X’s help centre, which also still carries an older 2,400 updates a day figure it does not reconcile with the 50. | 10,000 posts / 24h per app. 100 per 15 min per user. | 4 photos, or 1 GIF, or 1 video per post. Image 5 MB, GIF 15 MB. Video length follows the posting account’s Premium status. | No published additional cap |
LinkedIn | No daily post cap is published. LinkedIn states standard rate limits are not documented. | Not published for most products. The self-serve Share on LinkedIn tier lists 150 requests per member per day, counting every call, not posts. | Image 5 MB. Video 75 KB to 500 MB, 3 seconds to 30 min. | 50 per 24h, per profile and per company Page |
Facebook | Recommends up to 5 posts per day per Page. | 4,800 calls × engaged users per 24h. Reels are capped separately at 30 per 24h. | Photo 10 MB. Through ESER every video publishes as a Reel, 3 to 90 seconds, or standard feed video. | 25 per 24h, per Page |
TikTok | TikTok says the ceiling varies by creator, typically around 15 posts a day, shared across every API client on the account. | 6 Direct Post requests per minute, per token. | Video 4 GB. Max duration is set per creator, not fixed. Images 20 MB each. | 10 posts/day per connected account |
YouTube | No published per-channel daily upload cap for the site itself. | 100 videos.insert calls per day, in their own quota bucket, not the 10,000-unit pool. | Up to 256 GB or 12 hours. Title 100 chars, description 5,000. | 10 to 25 uploads per channel / 24h |
Pinterest | No published per-account daily pin cap. | Creating a pin is an org_write call: 300 a day on Trial, 100 a minute on Standard. Subject to change without notice. | Carousel 2 to 5 images. Image 20 MB. Video 2 GB, 4 seconds to 5 min. | 10 pins per day, per account |
Threads | No published cap in the app. | 250 posts and 1,000 replies per 24h, counted separately. | 1 image or video per post. No carousels. Video 1 GB, up to 5 min. | No published additional cap |
Bluesky | No published per-account daily posting cap. | 35,000 points per day, roughly 11,666 records. Weighted by operation. | Up to 4 images at 1 MB each, or 1 video, per post. The 1 MB ceiling catches people out. | No published additional cap |
Truth in Safeguards: The last column represents educational reference caps to help creators and agencies avoid automated spam tripwires. ESER AI does not artificially restrict your posting below official provider allowances unless you configure custom safeguard thresholds in your workspace settings.
Posting limits per platform: in-depth breakdown
Why each network enforces specific rate structures, what nuances appear in official developer documentation, and how professional operators manage their pipelines safely.
Instagram does not publish a universal daily post cap inside the mobile app. Human creators can publish freely until automated anti-spam behavioral tripwires engage. For third-party scheduling tools and developer workflows, Meta documents an exact ceiling: 100 API-published posts within a rolling 24-hour moving window.
Meta official developer documentation contains a known contradiction: while the core publishing endpoint specifies 100 posts per 24 hours, the carousel section of the same document cites 50. Developers can query the content_publishing_limit endpoint to retrieve the real-time quota consumption for any connected user token.
Via the Content Publishing API, carousels are strictly limited to 10 items even though mobile app users may occasionally see 20-item allowances. Individual images cannot exceed 8 MB, and video files are restricted to 300 MB with a 15-minute maximum duration for Reels.
X (Twitter)
X API v2X public support documentation continues to reflect conflicting guidance: legacy documentation references a 2,400 total updates per day allowance (subdivided into semi-hourly limits), while updated help articles specify 50 original posts and 200 replies daily for unverified handles.
Under X API v2, an approved application can publish up to 10,000 posts per 24 hours, but individual user tokens are restricted to 100 post creations per 15-minute window. Hitting this 15-minute ceiling returns an immediate HTTP 429 Too Many Requests response.
Media attachments are capped at 4 photos (5 MB each), 1 animated GIF (15 MB max), or 1 video per tweet. Video durations follow the authoring account subscription status: basic accounts are capped at 140 seconds, while Premium subscribers can upload longer video formats.
LinkedIn does not publish an official post-per-day ceiling for organic personal profiles or Company Pages. Furthermore, LinkedIn developer documentation states that standard platform throttle limits are dynamic and deliberately undocumented to prevent abuse.
For applications using the self-serve Share on LinkedIn product tier, the documented quota is 150 requests per member per 24 hours. Because rich media posts require separate asset registration, binary file transfer, and share creation calls, a single post often consumes 2 to 4 API requests from the daily member budget.
Single image uploads are capped at 5 MB. Native video files must be between 75 KB and 500 MB with durations ranging between 3 seconds and 30 minutes. Document uploads (PDF carousels) must stay within 100 MB and 300 pages.
Meta officially advises Page administrators that publishing more than 5 updates a day tends to split organic reach and reduce engagement per post. While no strict consumer UI cap prevents publishing more, the algorithmic distribution penalty is well documented.
At the API level, the Facebook Graph API applies a dynamic rate-limiting formula based on engaged users: 4,800 calls multiplied by the number of engaged users over the preceding 24 hours. Reels are restricted separately under a hard ceiling of 30 published Reels per 24-hour period per Page.
Photo files can be up to 10 MB. Videos formatted as Reels must be between 3 and 90 seconds in duration with a 9:16 aspect ratio. Standard feed videos support longer runtimes and larger file footprints.
TikTok
Content Posting APITikTok does not enforce a uniform global daily post cap. According to TikTok developer documentation, creator posting allowances vary dynamically based on account age, follower thresholds, and historical compliance—typically averaging around 15 posts daily across all authorized third-party apps combined.
The TikTok Content Posting API restricts the Direct Post initiation endpoint to 6 requests per minute per user access token. Exceeding this rate immediately results in client throttling.
Video file payloads support up to 4 GB. The maximum allowed video duration is determined on a per-creator basis rather than a static global ceiling. Photo post carousels allow up to 35 images with each file under 20 MB.
YouTube
Data API v3YouTube does not publish an official daily upload cap in YouTube Studio for verified channels, though newly created or unverified channels encounter phone verification challenges after 10 to 15 manual uploads in a single day.
For developer applications and scheduling tools integrating with the YouTube Data API v3, Google enforces a dedicated limit of 100 videos.insert calls per project per day. This upload allowance operates in its own separate quota bucket and does not drain the standard 10,000 daily API unit pool.
YouTube supports video files up to 256 GB or 12 hours in length for verified accounts. Titles are capped at 100 characters, descriptions allow up to 5,000 characters, and custom thumbnails must remain under 2 MB.
Pinterest does not publish a hard daily pinning limit for consumer accounts. However, Pinterest automated spam filters aggressively flag accounts that pin dozens of items in quick succession, downranking their pins from visual search.
Under the Pinterest API v5, creating a pin requires the org_write scope. Applications in Trial tier are limited to 300 write requests per 24 hours, while approved Standard applications receive up to 100 requests per minute.
Pins support single images (up to 20 MB), carousels containing 2 to 5 image slides, and video pins up to 2 GB with durations between 4 seconds and 5 minutes. Recommended aspect ratio is 2:3.
Threads
Threads APIThreads provides one of the most transparent developer API rate structures in the social ecosystem: each authenticated user account may publish up to 250 top-level posts and up to 1,000 replies within a rolling 24-hour window.
Post and reply quotas are tracked completely separately by Meta. An operator can publish 250 original thread starters and still retain the full 1,000 reply budget for conversational engagement.
The Threads API currently permits only a single image or video per post; carousel posts are not yet supported over the public API. Video files can be up to 1 GB in size with runtimes up to 5 minutes.
Bluesky
AT Protocol / com.atprotoBluesky and the decentralized AT Protocol manage server capacity through a point-based rate-limiting model rather than arbitrary post ceilings. Default Personal Data Servers (PDS) grant 35,000 points per account daily.
Standard post creations (app.bsky.feed.post) cost 3 points per record, allowing roughly 11,666 total posts per 24 hours. Write operations are also throttled by 10-minute and 1-hour burst windows.
Bluesky allows up to 4 images per post, but each individual image file cannot exceed 1 MB. High-resolution photos from modern smartphones must be compressed or downsampled before upload to prevent HTTP 400 Bad Request errors. Video uploads support single clips up to 60 seconds.
The documented limit is not the limit that stops you
Many creators and engineers assume that as long as they stay below a platform's daily quota (e.g. 100 API posts per day), their content will always publish cleanly. In practice, three distinct layers govern whether a post succeeds:
The Published Daily Quota
The total volume of requests an account or app token can make over 24 hours. This is the figure printed in developer documentation (e.g., 100 posts on Instagram or 250 on Threads).
Short-Window Burst Rates
Platforms enforce 1-minute, 5-minute, and 15-minute token rate limits to prevent denial-of-service and bot flooding. Publishing 10 posts in 60 seconds triggers a burst block even with 90 daily quota remaining.
Algorithmic Spam Heuristics
Social platforms run behavioral anti-abuse models. Firing posts at exactly identical second intervals or with repetitive hashtag blocks triggers automated account review and reach throttling.
What an automation agent should do at the ceiling
When building AI agents, MCP pipelines, or automated social scheduling engines, apply these production guidelines to avoid rate-limit tripwires:
Do not design workflows that intentionally consume 100% of maximum platform quota. Leaving a 30% margin accounts for manual operator posts and retry attempts.
Avoid scheduling posts precisely on the hour (e.g., 09:00:00). Introduce 2 to 7 minutes of randomized jitter between scheduled dispatches to mirror authentic human workflows.
When a provider returns HTTP 429, parse the Retry-After or X-RateLimit-Reset timestamp and halt queue execution until the window expires.
Most platforms (including Meta and LinkedIn) calculate rate limits across moving 24-hour windows rather than resetting at midnight UTC. Track rolling timestamps for each dispatch.
Social media posting limit questions
Clear answers to the most common questions about API rate limits, scheduling safeguards, and multi-channel publishing rules.
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