Do You Know the Twitter Limits?
By 
Although this article was written quite a few years ago, I still keep it up to date.
Some notable updates:
- November 2017 – The number of characters in a Tweet has been increased from 140 to 280
- May 2017 – Updated number of daily direct messages from 250 to 1,000
- October 2016 – Media attachments, links & screen names in replies no longer count in 140 character limit
- October 28, 2015 – Twitter have increased their follow limit from 2,000 to 5,000
- August 12 2015 – Twitter now allows you to send direct messages with up to 10,000 characters. The limit used to be 140 (the same as standard tweets)
- May 31 2013 – Twitter updates the number of Twitter lists you can have and the number of people you can follow in each list.
- January 6 2013 – Added biography character limit & Image sizes
- January 6 2012 – Added lists and unfollow limits
Twitter Limits Table
| Type | Limit | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Max Characters per tweet | 280 | Expanded from 140 to 280 in November 2017. As of September 2016, media attachments, links and screen names in replies don’t count to the character limit. |
| Max Characters per direct message | 10,000 | |
| Tweets | 2,400 per day | Spread across a 24 period. There are also separate limits per half hour periods, so you won’t be able to tweet all 2,400 in one go. The half hour limit is unknown for now. Retweets count towards the limit. |
| Direct Messages | 1,000 per day | |
| Changes to email address | 4 per hour | |
| Following | 1,819 | Above 1,819 you can follow this number +10%. |
| Number of Lists | 1,000 | You can only have 1,000 lists (this includes ones you have created and ones you follow) Before May 30th 2013 the max number of lists was 20 |
| Number of people in a list | 5,000 | Before May 30th 2013 the max accounts per list was 500 |
| Number of people you can follow | 1,000 per day | |
| How many people you can unfollow | Unknown | Twitter doesn’t state this, but you are likely to get banned if you unfollow people aggressively. I’d recommend sticking well under 400 unfollows per day. |
| Max Characters for biography | 160 | |
| Max length of video uploads | 2’20” (140 seconds) | MP4 video format with H264 format with AAC audio. Max upload of 512MB |
| Twitter In-Stream Photo Size | 1024x512px | Max upload size of 5Mb (or 3Mb for animated GIFs). Supports PNG, GIF or JPEG |
| Twitter Profile Picture Size | 400x400px | Max upload size of 2Mb. Supports PNG, GIF or JPEG |
| Twitter Header Image Size | 1500x500px | Max upload size of 5Mb. Supports PNG or JPEG |
| Number of Twitter accounts one phone number can be added to | 10 | See phone FAQs |
The Follow Limit
You may be new to Twitter, or you may have been using it for a long time and hit the famous “2000” limit. Later Twitter increased this to 5,000.
Most social networks have limits in place for the number of people you can “friend” or “follow”. For example, Google+ currently has a limit of 5,000 people you can have in your circles, and you have a limit of 5,000 “friends” on Facebook. This is to stop people, businesses or automated programs from abusing the system.
On Twitter, it used to be possible to bulk follow thousands and thousands of people in the hope that they would follow you back. This caused many Twitter accounts to abuse this and follow tens of thousands of people whilst not creating engaging content and not having many people follow them back.
Not good.
Twitter launched back in March 2006. But it wasn’t until July/August 2008 that Twitter started imposing limits on the number of people you could follow.
Twitter was having massive problems with spam (as Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone blogged at the time). There was a lot of backlash at the time, and a lot of confusion (see this ZDNet post on Twitter Spam efforts goes overboard and this blog post by Brad Williams on Twitter Follow Limits Are Jacked).
It’s commonly assumed that Twitter introduced a 2,000 following limit, meaning that you could only follow up to 2,000 people. However, this isn’t strictly true.
The Following Ratio
According to the author, Rob Brown, the magic number is actually 1,819! This means if you have 1,819 followers you can break through the 2,000 limit. Below 1,819 you are capped at following 2,000 people. Above 1,819 you can follow this number +10% (or 182). At 1,819+10% this means you can follow 2,001 people and you have just broken the 2,000 limit- hurray! This (as Rob Brown mentions on
This means if you have 1,819 followers you can break through the 2,000 limit. Below 1,819 you are capped at following 2,000 people. Above 1,819 you can follow this number +10% (or 182). At 1,819+10% this means you can follow 2,001 people and you have just broken the 2,000 limit- hurray! This (as Rob Brown mentions on this post) means for every 10 people that follow you, you can follow 11.
Update – from October 27, 2015, Twitter announced they were increasing this follow limit from 2,000 to 5,000:
Starting today, we are increasing our current follow limit from 2,000 to 5,000 accounts for all users: https://t.co/Yxx66XESMf
— Twitter Support (@Support) October 27, 2015
I haven’t tested this, but I am fairly sure that the same system will be used for this new limit. To break through the limit you will need to have more than 4545 people following you before you can break through the 5,000 limit. Let me know what you think!
Personally, I think this is a good thing. I’m a bit concerned when I see someone with a large number of people they follow- especially if they don’t have engaging content. Twitter is about engagement and networking- it is a social network after all. Having said that, following a large number of people isn’t always a bad thing. I love to follow new people, particularly those who Tweet about social media. I manage a large number of followers using Twitter lists- putting the people I find particularly interesting into my “awesome” list. Less regularly, I’ll check my main Twitter stream, and perhaps add some cool people to this list.
There is also a limit on how quickly you can follow people. Twitter have imposed a technical limit of following 1000 per day. Thank goodness for that! However, as this is a technical limit, following that amount per day is likely to get you banned due to breaking Twitters Following Rules and best practices (you should read this if you haven’t already).
Unfollow Limits
So, how many people can you unfollow? This is more of a tricky question since Twitter doesn’t actually say.
Twitter tools such as Social Oomph and Manage Flitter* have been asked by Twitter in the past to remove or alter their unfollow tools because this could go against Twitter terms. You can read about Social Oomph’s
You can read about Social Oomph’s take on this here.
The issue is what Twitter calls “aggressive follower churn” i.e. following and unfollowing people in quick succession with the aim of rapidly increasing your followers.
You can read more on Twitter’s Rules page.
It is still possible to bulk unfollow using Manage Flitter, but you have to click on each person manually, and then click unfollow.
Yes, there are various javascript hacks using Google Chrome, but to be honest, you’ll want to stay away from this is it is likely to get you banned.
So, is there a number on how many people you can unfollow at one time? Just use your common sense. I’ve unfollowed over 500 people in one day, but that was a one-off- I wanted to unclutter my feed, but if I unfollowed 500 people each day I’d likely get banned.
Other Limits
There are other limits, as the Twitter support pages states. You can post up to 2,400 tweets per day (this is spread throughout the day- there are limits per half hour, so you can’t just post 2,400 all at once!) You can post up to 250 direct messages per day (thank goodness!) You can change your email up to 4 times per hour (why would you want to do that anyway?)
You can post up to 2,400 tweets per day (this is spread throughout the day- there are limits per half hour, so you can’t just post 2,400 all at once!) You can post up to 250 direct messages per day (thank goodness!) You can change your email up to 4 times per hour (why would you want to do that anyway?)
You can post up to 1,000 direct messages per day (thank goodness!) You can change your email up to 4 times per hour (why would you want to do that anyway?)
As of May 30, 2013 you can now follow up to 1,000 lists (up from 20) and each list can include up to 5,000 accounts (up from 500). There are also limits when you use the Twitter API, but that’s another topic.
There are also limits when you use the Twitter API, but that’s another topic.
Twitter recently added the option of adding a header image. These have a maximum resolution of 1500×500 pixels (with a max upload size of 10Mb. You don’t have to upload your image at 1500×500, but it’s best to make it close to that to give a crisp and clear image. Certainly, try to make it above 640 pixels in width otherwise it will look pixelated. Finally, despite each tweet allowing a maximum of 140 characters, your biography can have up to 160 characters. How very generous of Twitter!
Summary
So, there you go. Remember, Twitter is a social network- these limits are for your and my protection. Do you think these limits are appropriate, or do you think they should be modified? Let me know in the comments below.
What the * means above…
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The editorial line is NEVER impacted by these links. I will only ever recommend a product or service if I think it is worth recommending! If a product or service does not have an affiliate scheme, then we will still include it in the same way.
In the interests of transparency, here are the non-affiliate links which will not help iag.me:
About Ian Anderson Gray
Ian is a Confident Live Marketing Coach and founder of Seriously Social. He’s an international speaker, trainer, teacher, web developer and consultant. He has a passion for making the techno-babble of live video and social media marketing easy to understand. Ian is co-founder of Select Performers – a family run web agency. As well as being a geek, husband, and dad to two kids, Ian is also a professional singer and lives near Manchester in the UK. Find out more
The Seriously Social Community
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Is there a rate limit for likes? I have been hit by this a couple of times and the limit seems to last for a lot longer than an hour. I do some responses but not many. Today is a prime example. I responded a few times and was liking some posts then boom, “Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again.”.Tried logging off and back on, tried different web browsers on different platforms, tried the Windows 10 client over several hours without any resolution. Nothing in the linked email account about any infractions.
Why is this happening and what can I do about it?
Hi Bill. There are soft and hard limits on Twitter. As far as I know, there is no hard limit for likes on Twitter (although there could be). In your case, you’ve hit a soft limit I think. Twitter uses algorithms to keep the integrity of the site. The algorithm has detected an issue with the number of likes you’ve made. Sometimes it can be over-zealous. Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can say to help at this stage. Just wait an hour or two and try again.
About the amount of the tweets I can see in one user’s page,I only can see about 800 tweets of each user,is that a limitation,too?
As far as I know, there is no limit on the number of Tweets you can see at twitter.com, but because of Twitter’s never-ending scroll, your browser can end up getting quite slow to load Tweets after a while.
What about ‘likes’ (♥️)? Twitter keeps turning off the likes a few seconds after I ‘like’ something, even after multiple attempts.
I wish I knew. There doesn’t seem to be a limit for likes, but I bet there is a hidden one. I’ve noticed that issue too sometimes. Maybe you’ve hit a temporary limit on the number of likes. Come back in an hour and see if it’s fixed. Or if not, they’ve blocked you from liking which would be
I have email notifications turned on for direct messages. It seems I only the get the first 50 (there are more) in my email each day. Is this a Twitter limit or something I can change in settings? I would like to have them all go to email.
Yes, unfortunately, Twitter tries to be “helpful” and reduce the number of email notifications you receive. There isn’t much you can do. I built a WordPress plugin called Twools which you can use with a IFTTT to send mention notifications. It’s a bit complicated to set up, but it’s the only alternative I know.
Very useful, thanks! Do you know if there is a limit to the number of tweets that can be scheduled through Tweetdeck? I’ve scheduled approximately 1000 tweets for a feature I’m planning later this year, but if I attempt any more, I get a “Tweet failed: Rate limit exceeded.” message. Twitter itself works fine, I just can’t schedule any more. Support haven’t responded – any pointers greatly appreciated!
Hi Richard, That’s a great question. Unfortunately, I’m not sure. I’ve never tried to schedule that many Tweets through Tweetdeck. I think there will be a limit, and if you’ve reached 1,000 and can’t add any more, then it seems like that is the limit. The fact that they’ve not responded to your support question highlights an important issue with using a free tool like Tweetdeck. It’s great when it works, but when it goes wrong you really want to be having good support. That’s one reason why I switched to a paid social media management tool. I will say, however, that the error message that you’re getting is an odd one. That error normally happens when you request too many things from the Twitter API in a 15 min time period. But maybe that is the error message they’re giving you when you exceed 1,000 scheduled tweets. Not very helpful!
Hello Ian and everyone else.
Τhrough Tweetdeck there are about the same limits : )
“In our business account (since Jan 2014 with verify phone, app, and much more) this limit is between 290 and 310 tweets every two hours.
Respectively, οn my own personal account (since 2008 without verify my phone and anything else) this limit is adjusted to 190 and 210 per two hours.”
Regards.
Thanks for the update. It makes sense that there are the same limits.
Tweetdeck IS Twitter. But it seems odd that you can’t schedule more. Ian
Hi Ian – just to follow up on this, I can confirm that once the scheduled tweets began to post, I was then able to schedule more tweets using Tweetdeck – suggests indeed that there must be a limit of around 1000 tweets that can be scheduled at a time. Thanks!
Thanks for letting me know, Richard. That makes sense!
Twitter has gone beyond just being a social gathering place. It’s achieved what yahoo tried & couldn’t: primary news source for ppl. It has become for news mags, newspapers, tv what Amazon is to brick & mortar stores. Tremendous potential. Q: Will Twitter be able to evolve quickly enough to become a primary business & subscription platform? We’re all anxious to get started…
Hi Susan, I totally agree. Twitter is the primary news source for many.
It’s my go to place for breaking news, although it’s important to check facts and not take everything at face value. But the problem is that Twitter still doesn’t know how to make money. They don’t seem to have a strategy. I think it is unlikely that they go down the subscription route because they’ve (so far) adopted the ad model. You can’t really have both – since they cannibalize each other. But who knows? They need to do something, because Twitter is still in a precarious position! Ian
I wanted to delete “Likes” in bulk but couldn’t find any online program to do it for thousands of thousand LIKES. So I used copy/paste script { $(‘.ProfileTweet-action–unfavorite’).click(); } in console & deleted many thousands in few hours ! Now I cant use “LIKE” option for new tweets by others as the message ” Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again.” is coming up whenever I hit LIKE option
What should I do now ?
Thank you
Did you ever get this figured out? I’ve been rate limited like this like 10 times over the past couple of days now, and I’m not even using a script. I’m just manually unliking everything in my list.
Sorry to hear that. To be honest I don’t know. I do know that there are a number of limits set by algorithms in the background. There may not be a hard limit, but your account could have been limited. I’ve reached out to Andy Piper on Twitter to see if he can add any clarification. I’ll let you know if he responds. Ian
What about likes? I’ve been trying to manage my “Likes” page and “manually” deleted several thousand and now I can’t see my Likes history? Do you know of the rules there? And I’m not sure why I can’t manually remove my likes (un-like prior likes). Thoughts would be much appreciated!
hello ian!! my account has this message popping everytime i try to follow people “Limit Reached. You are unable to follow accounts at this time.” I am aware that i have been aggressively following and u following people, but i just want to as how long it will last.
Hi Macy, this usually only happens for a 24 hour period. But be careful, if Twitter detects that you are aggressively following/unfollowing you, you could have your account suspended. Let me know how you get on. Ian
Please unsubscribe me. I’m getting too many emails in general in my inbox.
Thanks (nothing personal I promise xx)
Hi! Great article! I have a question I can’t find the answer to. How come when I scroll thru folks I follow (the link under my profile) using my phone, I can’t get to the bottom of the actual list, and it stops scrolling and all I see is simply a tiny grey dot? It’s not my phone’s memory either as I have a 128 GB pixel 2 xl with over 100 GB free. I’ve tried everything. Same thing happens with the list of folks following me. Plus, I’m only talking about 1800 folks I follow and about 1500 in total list of those who are following me. Thanks much for the info.
Hi, Yes, this frustrates me too. Twitter is supposed to refresh with new results, but sometimes there is a glitch and you can’t scroll back a certain amount. Try it on the desktop and see if that works better. But even so, I’ve had issues there too. On your phone, you could delete your cache or uninstall Twitter and then install it again.
I am working through sprout social and had a quick question. If I get too many failed tweets due to like content or too many direct retweets does my future tweets or profile become affected? Thank You
Hi Ryan,
Sprout Social uses the official Twitter API (like all social media management tools I know). Sprout won’t itself limit what you can do, but if Twitter thinks you are posting too many duplicated tweets or spamming the system, it could limit you or suspend your account. That would mean Sprout wouldn’t be able to access the API properly until you contact Twitter.
Sprout would get an error message and would let you know on the screen. As long as you are within the limits set out in this article, you should be fine. But also remember that there are limits within each 15 minute period, so you shouldn’t send a day’s worth of DMs in an hour, otherwise, you’ll have problems.
Addendum – me again, Ian. I checked my account and a big chunk of my followers have disappeared … maybe they were the “spoiler” accounts. However in addition, I appear to be following nobody at all. Hoping normal service will be returned tomorrow. Luckily I maintain a lot of lists [they’re a bit chaotic] but I should be able to track most of them down!
Interesting. They could be spammy accounts that were following you. Twitter may have deleted those accounts. That’s a good thing, although it does mean that your follower count goes down. But weird that you’re not following anyone. I assume your lists are ok? Has anything come back now?
Hello again, Ian. Just thought I’d update you in case it helps your research and others. I mentioned earlier today that my Twitter account was suspended and I had no idea why. I read through a big chunk of the comments here mining for answers. Lots of good pointers and tips by the way! However, the important thing for me [and maybe other folks] was that I received a return email today from Twitter which reads as follows:-
“Twitter Hello,
Your account is now unlocked, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.
Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. This sometimes happens when an account exhibits automated behavior in violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules).
Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please do not respond to this email as replies will not be monitored.
Thanks,
Twitter Support”
So there you go. None the wiser. However, that was less than 24 hours to recovery which may be some comfort to some.
Best wishes
Maddy
Thanks for the update. Yes, Twitter’s spam algorithms can be a little overzealous sometimes. But great to know they are taking responsibility this time and admitted that yours got caught up in the mix. Glad they got back to it quickly. The last time this happened was to another account and I had to wait around 12 days!
very useful information.
Glad it is helping someone!
Cheers Maddy
Madeline McEwen:-
“I have spent most of the day putting in a comma, and the rest of the day taking it out.” Oscar Wilde
What I find annoying is when somebody suggests you follow X person [because you have similar interests or whatever ] [plus Twitter GIVES you suggestions about who to follow] and then when you do, and add them to a list e.g. writers, creatives, bloggers, then they disappear for some unaccountable reason and then you bump into them again and go through the whole rigamarole again. Confused.
Hi Madeline, sorry I didn’t respond to this last month. That is really weird. So, have you found that, although you did follow them, you find out that you are no longer following them later on? Is this also the same with the list? Are they removed from your list too? I haven’t found this myself, but there was something called the “unfollow bug” a few years back. I couldn’t work out whether it was actually a bug but something weird was going on.
I similarly lose some people I thought I was following and then I don’t know if I just listed them and didn’t actually follow, or someone else’s “likes” and RTs were putting them in my timeline so I thought I was on follow but wasn’t actually, or I was following and they blocked and then unblocked me to remove my follow, or if there was a glitch.
I have been messaging a person since June last year and haven’t deleted the messages at all. last week i thought the person flagged my dm. He said he hasn’t. And sent me the screenshot of his dm inbox. then why can’t I dm him anymore?
That’s odd. He could have changed his settings. Is he following you? I assume he hasn’t blocked you? You can change the settings to only be able to receive DMs from people you follow.
Hi, Ian
Must say great and the way you presented it is remarkable. Thanks for sharing such an informative post, keep sharing.
Hi, my account just got locked thrice in a row and I don’t know why because I did not violate any twitter rules! The first time and second time, I was locked out after I liked a tweet of someone trying to pacify a hater comment. The third time I got locked out while I was scrolling down twitter support to ask about why I got locked out. Now it says that I’ve exceeded the amount of time I can verify my phone number and to “try later”. Do you know how late that would be? It’s already been a day! I have around 8 followers and follow less than 20 accounts.
Sorry for not replying until now. That’s odd. I’ve not heard of a limit to the number of times you can verify your phone number. I’m not sure what to recommend at this stage but I hope after a few more days it will sort itself out.
Twitter ban? For following and unfollowing aggressively? Not really. You get a time out. A seat on the naughty step. It just means until the time at which you fall below the limit, you can’t add any more. If you spend an hour adding 1000 followers, it’ll be 23 hours before you can add one more and it will be the full 24 hours before you can add another 1000. You can trigger speed restrictions by following and unfollowing too fast, but just slow your chrome extension or whatever you use down. Make it do one follow/unfollow per second and leave it run overnight. Personally I prefer automated bots that you can set up to do it through the day for you. So if someone says #Mercedes and you sell car parts for those cars, you give them an automated follow. Then have another bot that deletes anyone who hasn’t followed you back in 3 days clearing up behind it. Then forget about it forever. But don’t knicker wet over “being banned by twitter”. It doesn’t happen. They only ever time you out or lock your account. You never get banned. It isn’t in their interest. The very fact you are going to this effort shows you are one of the few that actually cares about their platform. Most accounts are dormant or bot created. The last thing they want is to remove active humans, even if they are using tools.
Thanks for your comment. What you say makes sense. It’s probably best not use the word “banned” but you can definitely get your account suspended. I had an account suspended due to “suspicious behaviour” and it took 2 weeks to have this suspension reversed. Twitter’s algorithms can detect this unusual behaviour (when using automation) and can suspend you. Of course (and this was my situation) it can get it wrong. While Twitter may not ban you completely or delete your account- you can get suspended, which means your account will appear protected) and that isn’t good.
Hi i dont know if you can help me but my acc was lock and i unlocked it using my code but i cant follow anyone i dont know why please help me
Hi Noli. That is very frustrating. Are you receiving any error messages when you try and follow people? Have you tried doing this on the desktop version of twitter.com? Also check to see if your account has been suspended – as that might account for the restrictions. You can apply to Twitter to get it unsuspended when you see the message.
Hi; don’t know if you can help or not, but I recently started Unfollowspy and every day they give me a count averaging an addition of 15 followers but 12 – 14 unfollowers, every day. This has held a pattern for three to four weeks, every day. Too long to be coincidence. I’ve tried to contact unfollowspy.com with no luck. It seems that either Twitter or unfollowspy.c is removing followers to average out accounts I pick up each day so I never grow past where I am which is right at 2150.
What do I do?
Thanks so much!
Hi Rebecca, I haven’t tried Unfollow Spy myself. I am always wary about these tools.
According to their website, they…
But I would hope that was a manual process – i.e. where you choose who you want to unfollow.
Twitter, in fact, ban tools from automatically following and unfollowing.
It goes against their terms. It doesn’t stop tools from offering it, but they shouldn’t do it.
I’d try and contact them again, and if they don’t get back to you, remove it from your Twitter apps.
You could look at unfollowing more yourself, and start following them in a Twitter list. It’s good to have more followers then people you follow in order to increase your followers.
Hope that helps.
Something you may want to include is that there appears to be a limit to how many tweets you can favourite/like per day. I went on a liking spree and got hit with an error message saying I had exceeded daily limits at around the 1000 mark. There is definitely a like rate limit (API is defined in docs and for the website not documented).
Hi Peter. Yes, I think you’re right. There are lots of hidden limits that Twitter use. The problem is that they are not documented, and the limits change from user to user. That’s because they use algorithms to detect what those limits should be – at least this is my understanding. Thanks for
That’s interesting. Yesterday I tried doing more likes and less retweeting [relatively new to Twitter] and this morning my account was suspended😓
Really annoying when that happens. Twitter has algorithms that try and work out whether accounts are doing things that go against their terms and conditions. Because they are programs, they sometimes get things wrong. It happened to one of my secondary accounts a few years back. Thankfully I got it reversed, but really annoying,
I was recently locked out but could return by providing my phone number.
However, this did not tell me the reason I was suspended.
Is it against Twitter rules to Tweet to just anyone?…I mean, if you are interested in a certain subject….and do a “search” for people with the same interests….is it against Twitter rules to send them information or links based upon your shared interests?
Also, I see in the Twitter “rules” that a person can be locked out if they have been reported as Spamming…..Wouldn’t this allow “like minded” people to ban together to remove Tweets which they feel run against their best interests?….say Racist Alt-Right members complaining about Black Liberal accounts…..
Hi Katt, thanks for your comment and sharing your experience. Sounds very frustrating, but glad you got back on Twitter.
One big problem is that Twitter doesn’t have the capacity to provide decent customer service. They’ll never tell you why you got suspended. I did manage to get a response from them once when my account was incorrectly suspended, but that was only after a lot of digging. For me, my account was incorrectly flagged due to an over-zealous algorithm. It sounds like this can happen from time to time. I think they do take into account, the number of times an account has been flagged as spam, but I think there is some human checking from Twitter here. But, you are right, it is open to abuse and accounts that people disagree with (from which ever standpoint) could be flagged as spam and potentially suspended by Twitter. It’s a bit of a nightmare for Twitter – how do they police it?
I just opened my first Twitter account and got suspended (locked out) for following 100 people in 1 day, yet the limit is 1,000? I was mainly just following the people I like (friends, celebs, youtubers, etc)…What “should” our daily limit be if I’m getting locked out for 100? I don’t want to get in trouble again. Thanks!
Unfortunately, you’ve been hit by an automated limit by Twitter’s algorithm. Although the limits stated in this article are still true, Twitter has algorithms checking for anything unusual. If it spots too much going on, it can flag this and temporarily suspend you. Quite often it gets it wrong which is frustrating. I think when you’re new to Twitter, it’s best to keep to a much lower limit, to begin with. Maybe follow 10-20 per day, to begin with, and then slowly increase it.
So Liking a Tweet counts against your 2,400 Tweets per day?
No, that will be a separate limit. Unfortunately, I’ve not seen anything from Twitter that gives what that limit is.
Hello Ian and everyone else. I think i can help you at this point.
In our business account (since Jan 2014 with verify phone, app, and much more) this limit is between 290 and 310 tweets every two hours.
Respectively, οn my own personal account (since 2008 without verify my phone and anything else) this limit is adjusted to 190 and 210 per two hours.
I hope i helped you.
Thanks so much. That is very helpful.
I think the hourly limit changes from person to person, and may be calculated by an algorithm. I’ve found I can follow 300-500 people within one hour, although I’ve only done that very rarely. As for likes, I’ve never tried to test it – that is basically because I only use the like button a few times per day.
Thanks again for sharing! Ian
It’s my pleasure Ian.
Yes and don’t forget, these algorithm-limits include actions from all devices, including web, mobile, phone, API, etc.
API requests from all third-party applications are tracked against the hourly API limit. People who use multiple third-party applications with their account will therefore reach the API limit more quickly.
Regards.
That’s a great point. Each app has their own limits set within 15 minute windows – https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/rate-limits.html But I think you’re right in Twitter’s algorithms having a bigger picture and taking everything into account too.
Hi, can I ask? An year ago I have been make the first twitter account. And I use my telephone number, I am silly, I just forget the password. So I decide to create another account. I used my telephone number again. How many times can I the phone number use? I got a ban. I think this is because of the same number. I am sorry if this guestion is stupid. Have a nice day Michelle.
That’s a good question! First of all, couldn’t you reset the password of your original Twitter account?
As for how many times you can use the same phone number across different Twitter accounts, I really don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought there was a limit. You shouldn’t have been banned because of that. I have 2 or 3 Twitter accounts that use the same number. Ian
There is a limit, possibly around 10 or 15.
I have checked Twitter help a while ago and they say we can add the same phone number to 10 accounts.
https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/phone-number-faqs
Can I add my phone number to multiple accounts?
You can add your phone number to up to 10 accounts. It’s important to note that only the account most recently linked to this phone number can perform SMS commands and receive SMS notifications for account activity like Direct Messages, new followers, Retweets, etc. Any other accounts you have associated with your phone number will not be able to edit Text notifications settings. Each account that has your phone number associated with it will still receive SMS text messages for password reset requests or security features like login verification.
Thanks for that! Really helpful update. Ian
It’s my pleasure Ian.
Hi Ian
when i follow someone he not get notification that i followed him what can i do ?
kindly help me.
This is actually happening to me as well suddenly. Something got changed.
so how i fix it ?
The other person needs to have notifications for new people following them switched on in their settings. However, Twitter sometimes tries to be “helpful” and reduce the number of emails it sends out and so they may not receive that notification. That shouldn’t stop them receiving a notification in the Twitter app though. If so, it may be a temporary glitch.
Yeah thats been glitching out a bit. if you go to your followers it will list them in order of following. so if they want to follow everyone back and not miss some. which are getting left out in the notifications.
Yes, Twitter (and actually most networks) don’t send out notifications for everything. I find this frustrating, because I want email notifications on for everything since I use my GMail account for my central repository. I did build an app called Twools which you can connect with IFTTT to help with this, but it’s a bit geeky. Ian
It’s possible to turn off notifications for accounts that are new, don’t have a verified email, don’t have a verified phone, have a default profile photo, or that the other account doesn’t follow or who doesn’t follow the other account, or appear to be spam (automated messages, for instance).
So the things you can correct are to verify at least one form of contact, make sure you have a profile photo that gives information about you (doesn’t have to be a photo of yourself although they claim this is better, but another graphic of some kind is also fine), and be sure your content is relevant and doesn’t come across as spam (either to users or to Twitter bots). .
You’ve probably solved this part by now, but for folks new to Twitter, be sure to follow some relevant accounts.
Hi Ian!
How come when I follow someone on twitter, I look at their page the next day and it says I’m not following them anymore?
I haven’t hit a following limit.
Hi Luss, that’s weird! Does this happen regularly? Is this with one person, or does it happen with a few people you follow? I assume this isn’t happening to you, but if the other person blocks you, then Twitter will unfollow them from you. It’s unlikely, but it could be a tool that is doing the unfollowing for you. Do you have any 3rd party tools that have access to your Twitter account? Other than that, there has been what is known as the “Twitter Unfollow Bug” which some people have suffered from. Twitter have never admitted this, but sometimes it appears that certain people are unfollowed for no reason. I’d just keep an eye on it. Let us know if you find anything out.
Many thanks for the reply. It is happening with large number of people and I found out that it is the “Twitter Unfollow Bug”.
Hi. Thanks for writing and maintaining this useful article.
Twitter’s docs list the DM limit as 1000 per day.
https://support.twitter.com/articles/15364
Is there a reason you’re listing it as 250?
Hope you can clarify.
Best regards.
Thanks for this, Hugo. Well spotted. Twitter have updated the max number of DMs from 250 to 1,000. I have updated the article accordingly. I just wish they had a better UI for direct messages and had some filtering because I still get a lot of spammy DMs!
Whenever I try to like a tweet, the button turns red and then reverts back to its greyish colour. What could be the problem?
Hi Kelvin, sorry to hear this problem you’re having. It sounds like Twitter have imposed a limit on your account. Has your account been suspended or have you received any messages when you log in or via email? Best to check.
Or just wait and see if the limit is lifted.
I am having the same problem. Did it start working on its own? How long was it not working?
I’d love to know whether the issue resolved itself. I’ve not seen this issue myself. Let me know if it does start working again.
I’ve had the problem of “disappearing likes” several times. It fixes itself by the next day- never sooner. I can’t track exact time but this is definitely a problem. I’ve requested Twitter support 4-5x and never got a response. Wish I knew why this was happening!
Apparently we’ve reached some kind of following ceiling with only about 200. I created support tickct but only go an email that says”Your account appears to have exhibited automated behavior that violates the Twitter Rules” and that I should see a prompt letting me know my acct is locked and to click start. But i don’t see any of that. I can see my profile but can’t do anything, follow back, tweet, etc.I can’t even tweet to Twitter support. Is this temporary? If so how long would it last? How can you build your account without following people you like. I’d appreciate any suggestions.
Hi Angela, That’s odd. Your account may have been flagged for violating the automated behavior rules. Twitter uses algorithms to try and determine whether accounts are using spammy behavior. This could include automated following/unfollowing or liking. The problem is that it gets this wrong, and many people that do adopt this behavior seem to be getting away with it. If you can log into your account, go to settings and go to Apps and see which apps you’ve given access to your account. Revoke access to any accounts you don’t recommend or could be violating this behavior. I’d also change your password. Hopefully, Twitter will reverse their decision. I’d also try and contact them again. They’re not great at responding but they eventually do, at least in my experience.
Useful article
Can a verified account holder see my tweets if I tweet them with a protected twitter account, without following me ?
No. If you’ve protected your Twitter account, only the people you have accepted to follow you can see your Tweets.
Thank you for replying. Yes, I know that we can see protected tweets only if we’re following each other. I just thought may be verified accounts have some special features ? And may be they can see their protected mentions too ?
I understand. I think some verified users have extra filters in Twitter, but that’s it. There would be outcry if verified users could see other people’s protected Tweets. It’s definitely not the case that they can see them if they don’t follow you. Ian
Thank you Ian
Then what about all those fans and people who tweet celebrities with their protected accounts ? Simply waste of time ?
You mean, if the celebs have protected accounts?
Well, it’s kind of pointless, in that the only people who would see these retweets are the people who also follow that celeb.
Can you update on this ?
Can a verified account holder on Twitter see or read his private mentions sent by a protected account ?
Great post. How do marketing companies overcome these limits? For example, for the 2400 Twitter notification limit per day, is there a way to buy additional notification capability from Twitter?
Really interesting question, Partha. Unfortunately you can’t break through these limits, not even if you offer Twitter money!
Hi there, when ever I try to like a tweet, the heart will go red but immediately go back, ‘unliked’ as it were. It’s happened a few times off and on but always seems to correct. I’ve changed passwords, etc but wonder if I’m not hitting a limit. I can’t find any info. Thank you
same here! it’s been doing this for about a day on my phone and computer. i don’t know how to fix it
helppppp
Weird, sorry to hear that, Amber. Can you check that your account is in full working order? I assume you’ve not been sent an email from Twitter saying your account has been suspended? Other than that, then perhaps you have reached a limit. I’m not aware of a like limit, but Twitter do have hard limits internally as well as limits that change for different users – these are unfortunately set by algorithms which sometimes get it wrong. And unfortunately Twitter support aren’t great at getting back to you. I do have one contact that I’ll try and ask, but I am not overly confident I’ll get a response!
This happens to me even with low useage. Sometimes the first or third like. Unlike they just don’t want me to read Twitter without necessarily posting every day, I think it’s unlikely to be related to a usage algorithm.
What about abuse of hashtags? can anyone help me on that…. I want to start promoting my site, but I don’t wanna get banned/suspended
I don’t think there is a limit on the number of hashtags you can use. However, I’d recommend not going mad – just because too mang hashtags can be offputting to your audience. I would say 2 or 3 hashtags per Tweet is optimum. On Instagram, however, you can go mad. The more hashtags on Instagram, the better!
I had trouble retweeting as I think the Twitter algorithm banned me from doing so because of my hashtag campaign on an issue. Now I found a way around it by using twitter URL’s in bit.ly and it worked briefly. Now I can’t send any URL or retweet and can only send normal tweets, ones with hashtags and pictures!! If I try, none of my retweets or tweets with URL’s appear under #hashtags, but my other regular tweets instantly do appear. Arrrggggh. Know any solution, please? Cheers
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Hi Ted, sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I am surprised that Twitter would have banned you from hashtag usage. Can you explain what you did? It sounds very odd. When you are doing your hashtag search, are you showing all results and not just top results?
When I click on someone’s followers list only a small fraction show up. For example this person’s page says they have 800 followers but when I click on “followers” only 23 people show up in the list. There is the little tweety bird at the bottom so I know I have reached the end. How do they do that?
Hi Stacy. That is very strange. I assume this is on the Twitter website? Have you tried the mobile app and see if you get the same?
Hi!
Since the beginning of November I have not been able to tag people in my photos in tweets – I can choose them, but after publishing the tweet all of them disappear. Do you know what is a problem?
Thats exactly whats happening to me right now. We have a news digital web account and we cant tag people in photos. We tried everything but no solution.
Sorry to hear this Mark and Ramiro. I haven’t come across this bug before and I’ve not found anything form searching the web. You could try and contact Twitter support at https://twitter.com/Support/ although they’re very bad at replying.
Can someone follow you for their own agenda then mute you as not to get ur tweets so their page can stay clean with their politics?I blocked them and follow people in philosophy &Judaism and keep it clean
Hi
I only made 5 tweets and my account got blocked. Not able to unblock it till now even after email and phone number confirmation.
Uggh, how frustrating. Have you managed to get it unblocked yet? Have you tried this at a different location? Sometimes Twitter takes the IP address of your location into account when blocking. For example, there is a limit to how many people can create a Twitter account in one location (as a friend of mine found up while she was giving a workshop to Twitter beginners!).
what ?! i just joined twitter will i get banned too for silly reasons so quickly?
I wish they would block mine.They should tell you that you can’t unsubscrib from your smartphone.I learned my lesson by just signing into a hipster site to make a comment
Hi Ian, Do you know of a social media “deck” that does more than 350 schedule messages at once, I use and love Hootsuite, but, I actually need to send a lot of messages out per month, we’re a podcast and I want to send out our schedule of programming automatically. Unfortunately 350 is too little of an amount! Thanks in advance!
Thanks. Great question. I would have recommended Buffer, but they’ve now put a cap on the number of posts you can schedule. It’s currently 100 on their individual plan. I personally love Agorapulse, and I am not aware of a limit on scheduled posts. You could also check out Social Champ – https://socialchamp.io which is a bit like Buffer.
Hi Ian thanks for this post.
Im new to twitter so still getting the hang of the rules. Im trying to gain an income through affiliate marketing. I post a link about every hour or so using different hashtags (that feel are relevant to what Im promoting) I dont want to spam.
I haven’t had any problems yet.
I also tweet other blogs that I read, my personal blog and some non linked updates but most of my tweets relate to my affiliate link.
Do you h ave any tips? Am I spamming? Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Hi Allie. As long as you are giving value with your Tweets then I think you should be ok. It’s important to vary your Tweets. Share other people’s posts, share personal and business stuff too- be human as well as posting your affiliate links. Make sure you engage with others too. People are far more likely to engage and click on your links if you do all these things. Hope that helps. Ian
Thanks Ian. I appreciate the help. It makes sense.
I keep receiving warnings about suspected unusual activity and suspend from account until I change the password every time I follow around 100 people/day even if I do it with rate of 20-30 per hour. I do not use any automated method for following. Is there any following new limit that I was not aware? I have around 7K followers and following around 5000 people. Thanks
i think so, because when i follow 20 people in 5 minutes. they block my account .then i have to confirm through email or phone
John, something very odd is happening then. What’s your Twitter account and I’ll have a look? Ian
Hi, Daniel and John. There are hard limits and soft limits which are enforced by algorithms. The limits I’ve included in this article are the hard limits announced by Twitter. However, in a bid to curb spammers and scammers, Twitter use algorithms to try and detect “unusual activity”. We can’t know exactly how they work – only Twitter knows that. Most of the time these algorithms do a pretty good job. However, sometimes they get it wrong. I don’t use any automated following methods and I’ve been ok for the most part. However, I did have another one of my Twitter accounts suspended by mistake. I contacted Twitter and after a week they sorted it out. I can’t really give you any recommendations except do have a look through all the 3rd party apps you’ve given access to, by going to your Twitter settings and then apps. Have a look through the list and revoke access to any apps you don’t recognise. Perhaps an app you gave access to is doing bad things!
Hi Ian, Quick question. I have a twitter account which I created for personal use and then eventually I used it for marketing for the companies I worked with. My question is: Why is it my followers are not growing? Everyday I am receiving a notifications that there are people who are following me, yet it’s not showing. My followers got stuck with 800 something. Any idea? Also, I installed before an app with my previous company, however, I forgot the tool I used, until now everytime my previous company are updating, it automatically posted on my twitter account. I wanted to remove it but I couldn’t remember the tool. Anyway, here is my twitter account for your reference, please take a look and I hope you could give me some light. @h20mysticshadow
Regards,
Daisy from Qatar
Hi Daisy, not sure what the issue is. You now have 864 followers. It went up by one when I followed you. so it is definitely working. In order to stop access to the app, you need to go to your Twitter settings and then select Apps. Go through any apps you don’t want and revoke access. Hope that helps! Ian
Hi Ian,
I’m having the same problem. I get notifications that people are following I should have over 650 by now but the followed number keeps dropping. My twitter page is @_CarliPalmer_ . By any chance do you know why this is happening?
Carli
It could be that people are following you and then very shortly afterwards unfollowing you. You get notified by Twitter that people follow you, but you don’t get notified when people unfollow you. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who still adopt the aggressive follower churn technique that Twitter outlaws. This is where people follow lots of people, wait a short while, and then unfollow everyone who doesn’t follow them back. Check Twitter Analytics to see what is happening – https://analytics.twitter.com – look at your followers graph.
I’d also clean up the number of people you follow. You’re following almost 4 times as many people as follow you. Move people into Twitter lists and then unfollow them. Then be patient. Follow people slowly and hopefully your followers will increase. I recommend checking out the tool ManageFlitter.
Thanks Ian!
Thank you, Ian, and sorry for delayed reply. Maybe people are following me and then when I followed them back, they unfollowed me that is why my followers got stuck. Have a lovely day.
Kind Regards,
Daisy
Thanks Ian. Good to know. Hard keeping up with all this social media buzz. Especially at 87.
Thanks, Kim. That’s great to hear. It’s all such a fast paced world, no matter how old you are! You’re doing a terrific job, I’m sure!
Hello. I use Twitter Fast Follow to receive text message notifications of tweets when they are posted. I used to get the full tweet plus a short link URL to the original tweet in the text message. Recently the text message has truncated the tweet to the first 50 characters and no longer includes a link to the original Tweet which makes it pretty useless! Did Twitter change something here? Is there something that needs to be changed on the original Twitter account to make Fast Follow work like it used to?
Thanks for your comment, Olivia. Twitter may have made some changes. I’ve not noticed anything myself (I developed my own Twitter app and everything seems to be working ok). Have you contacted Twitter Fast Follow? It sounds like they need to make an update or fix a bug. Twitter do now not count urls and screen names in their 140 character count.
Thanks Ian. I tried to search on Twitter to report a problem but I only see an option to report violations. Is there a link that you know of to report a bug?
I’m so sorry, Olivia. I misread what you had said – basically, because I’ve never used Twitter’s Fast Follow service before. I still think you may need to contact them, but contacting Twitter is a bit difficult. However, they have a list of contact forms here which you may find helpful – https://support.twitter.com/forms Hope that helps! Ian
Hii
I have a problem since 4 to 5 days that it shows “cannot retweet status” & I am unable to follow new people.
I have following only 535 .. Then ow come i reached the following limit ??
What to do now
That’s weird. It sounds like Twitter’s algorithm has flagged something and temporarily locked your site down. Have you tried logging out and back into Twitter? I wonder if your account has been suspended or restricted in some way?
Why i am reciving half massege form 40404, Every massege is unclear, please help me out…. .
Sorry, I don’t quite understand. You could explain again?
Hi
Why can not more than a specified number of days, I liked tweets? Like there any restrictions?
There aren’t any restrictions here that I know of. However, the Twitter website sometimes decides to stop delivering Tweets if you keep on scrolling down the page. They do exist, but you may want to try Twitter advanced search to see if that gives you what you want.
hi ! may i know the maximum amount you can turn on notifications for ?
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I don’t quite follow you. Maximum amount of what? I’m not sure there is a limit for notifications, unless you mean the number of email notifications which unfortunately Twitter filters when you get to a certain number per hour.