Amazon Character Limits 2026: The Complete Technical Reference

The short answer: since July 27, 2026, Amazon product titles are capped at 75 characters (including spaces) in every category except media, with a new Item Highlights field adding up to 125 searchable characters. Bullet points should run 10-255 characters each with only the first 1,000 bytes indexed, descriptions allow 2,000 characters, and backend search terms allow 249 bytes in US/UK/EU, 500 bytes in Japan, and 200 bytes in India. The backend limit is measured in bytes, not characters. Exceeding it by one byte silently de-indexes every backend term you’ve added.

That bytes-vs-characters distinction is the single most expensive mistake on Amazon listings. Industry estimates put silent backend de-indexing at around 47% of listings, and most sellers never notice because Seller Central doesn’t warn you. This guide is the complete technical reference: every field, every marketplace, the UTF-8 encoding rules that trip people up, and how to count what Amazon actually counts.

Most guides still say “200 characters for the title.” That number died on July 27, 2026, when Amazon cut titles to 75 characters everywhere except media. This reference covers the new title rule plus the part other guides skip: for backend keywords, the unit Amazon counts isn’t characters at all. It’s bytes, which is why a keyword list full of emojis or umlauts blows the limit long before the character count suggests it should.

What this page covers: the technical character and byte limits across every listing field. If you’re looking for how to write a title that ranks within those limits, see Amazon product title optimization. For backend strategy specifically, see Amazon backend keywords.

What Are All Amazon’s Character Limits? (Master Reference Table)

Amazon enforces hard limits on every listing field. Titles cap at 75 characters in every category except media (since July 27, 2026), bullets should run 10-255 characters each, descriptions cap at 2,000 characters, and backend search terms at 249 bytes. The new Item Highlights field adds up to 125 searchable characters alongside the title.

Field	US/UK/EU Limit	Japan Limit	India Limit	Mobile Display	Notes
Product Title	75 characters	75 characters	75 characters	Displays near-fully	Media exempt (200 chars). Enforced July 27, 2026
Item Highlights	125 characters	125 characters	125 characters	Below the title	Indexed for search; shows when title is under 75 chars
Bullet Points	10-255 chars/bullet	10-255 chars/bullet	10-255 chars/bullet	Full display	Only first 1000 bytes indexed. Flat file accepts up to 500
Product Description	2000 characters	2000 characters	2000 characters	Full display	HTML no longer supported
Backend Search Terms	249 BYTES	500 BYTES	200 BYTES	N/A	Exceeding de-indexes ALL terms
A+ Content Text	Varies by module	Same	Same	Full display	150-6000 chars per module

The numbers above are the visible rules. The hidden rule is the one that costs sellers the most traffic: backend search terms are measured in bytes, not characters. The next section explains why that distinction matters.

What Is the Difference Between Bytes and Characters?

A character is what a shopper sees. A byte is the storage unit Amazon counts. For plain English text, one character equals one byte, so the distinction never matters. For anything else, it does. Umlauts use 2 bytes per character. Japanese characters use 3. Emojis use 4 or more. Backend search terms are stored as UTF-8, which is why Amazon counts bytes instead of characters in that field.

Here is how each character class consumes bytes:

1. ASCII Characters (1 byte each):
   • English letters (A-Z, a-z), numbers (0-9), and basic punctuation (., !, ,) each use one byte.
   • Example: keyword = 7 characters = 7 bytes.
2. Extended Latin Characters (2 bytes each):
   • European language characters with accents need two bytes each.
   • Examples: German umlauts (ä, ö, ü, ß), French accents (é, è, ç), and the Spanish ñ.
   • Example: größe = 5 characters = 7 bytes (g + r + ö + ß + e, where ö and ß are 2 bytes each).
3. CJK Characters (3 bytes each):
   • Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters use three bytes each.
   • Example: 「キーワード」 (“keyword” in Japanese) = 5 characters = 15 bytes.
4. Emojis (4+ bytes each):
   • A basic emoji is 4 bytes. Compound emojis with skin-tone or family modifiers can run to 25 bytes or more.

This is the part that breaks backend search terms in international marketplaces. The 249-byte limit is the same everywhere, but the character capacity it buys depends on the language:

Language	Bytes per character	Usable characters in 249 bytes
English (ASCII)	1	249
German (with umlauts)	mostly 1, accents 2	~200
Japanese (kana/kanji)	3	~83

What Is the 75-Character Title Limit? (New for 2026)

Amazon announced its biggest title change in a decade on June 10, 2026, and started enforcing it on July 27, 2026: product titles must be 75 characters or fewer, including spaces, in every category except media. The old 200-character master rule and the category-specific caps (150 for Electronics, 125 for Apparel, 80 for Pet Supplies) are gone. One limit now applies everywhere except Books, Music, Video, and DVD, which keep the old 200-character rule.

Three things to know about how enforcement works:

• Amazon rewrites non-compliant titles. Titles left over 75 characters are gradually replaced with AI-generated recommendations. Brand-registered sellers get 14 days to review, edit, or approve the suggested title before it goes live. Everyone else gets the rewrite applied for them.
• Item Highlights absorbs the overflow. The new field takes up to 125 additional characters for details like materials, use cases, or compatibility. It’s indexed for search like the title and displays below the title in search results and on the product page (display rollout started August 10, 2026). Highlights generally only show when the title is under 75 characters, so a non-compliant title costs you the extra real estate too.
• The style rules from the January 2025 policy still apply. No special characters (!, $, ?, _, {, }, ^, ¬, ¦) unless they’re part of the brand name, no promotional claims, and no word repeated more than twice (articles, prepositions, and conjunctions excepted).

The upside: the mobile truncation problem mostly disappears. A compliant 75-character title displays close to fully on mobile, where the old 200-character titles were cut off around 70-80 characters anyway.

Best practice: put brand, product type, and your primary keyword in the 75-character title, then move materials, sizes, compatibility, and secondary keywords into Item Highlights. Between the two fields you have a combined 200-character budget, all of it searchable.

What Are Amazon Bullet Point Character Limits?

There are three different bullet numbers, and mixing them up is common:

1. Style guideline (10-255 characters/bullet): Amazon’s bullet point requirements, in force since August 15, 2024, call for each bullet to run between 10 and 255 characters, with at least three bullets per listing. No emojis, no special characters, no end punctuation, no guarantee or pricing language. Amazon can rewrite or remove bullets that break these rules.
2. Technical field cap (500 characters/bullet): The flat-file field physically accepts up to 500 characters per bullet. This is what saves, not what’s compliant. Sellers get 5 bullets; vendors (1P) can be eligible for up to 10 in some categories.
3. Indexing limit (1,000 bytes total): Amazon’s search algorithm only indexes the first 1,000 bytes across all five bullets combined. Anything past that displays to shoppers but is invisible to search.

The practical rule: aim for roughly 1,000 characters total across all five bullets if you’re writing in ASCII. A clean target is 5 bullets at ~200 characters each. Listings with well-structured bullets that respect the 1,000-byte indexing window can see keyword indexing coverage improve by ~15% on average. For a deeper structural framework, see the TFSD Framework.

What Is the 249-Byte Backend Keyword Limit?

Backend search terms are limited by bytes, not characters. The exact limit varies by marketplace:

• US, UK, EU: 249 bytes
• Japan: 500 bytes
• India: 200 bytes

Going one byte over the limit causes Amazon to silently drop every backend keyword on the listing. There is no error message in Seller Central. The field saves successfully, the keywords appear in the UI, and the algorithm ignores them.

Rules for using the field efficiently:

• Separate keywords with spaces. Don’t use commas or semicolons.
• Don’t repeat keywords. Amazon’s algorithm handles plurals and stemming automatically.
• Count bytes, not characters, if you sell in non-English marketplaces or use special characters. A German phrase like “für größe farbe” is 18 visible characters but 20 bytes.

For a complete backend workflow, see Amazon backend keywords.

What Are Amazon Description and A+ Content Limits?

Product descriptions are capped at 2,000 characters and must be plain text. HTML support was removed in July 2021. For richer formatting, use A+ Content, which has its own per-module limits:

Module Type	Headline Limit	Body Text Limit
Standard Text	160 chars	300-1000 chars
Image Header with Text	150 chars	6000 chars
Premium Text	80 chars	5000 chars

Standard A+ Content allows up to 5 modules per listing. Premium A+ allows 7. A common workaround sellers try is putting text inside images to bypass character limits. Don’t. Image text isn’t indexed by Amazon search or by Google, and it isn’t accessible to screen readers.

What Happens When You Exceed Amazon’s Character Limits?

The consequences differ by field, and they range from cosmetic to catastrophic:

• Titles: since July 27, 2026, a title over 75 characters gets flagged and gradually replaced with an AI-generated rewrite. Brand-registered sellers get a 14-day review window; everyone else gets Amazon’s version. Over-limit titles also forfeit the Item Highlights display slot.
• Bullet Points: Customers see everything you wrote, but keywords past the 1,000-byte indexing window contribute nothing to search ranking.
• Backend Search Terms: The harshest penalty. One byte over 249 bytes (US/UK/EU) and the entire field is ignored for SEO. No error, no warning, no indication that anything is wrong.
• Product Description: You’ll see an explicit error and the listing won’t save.

The failure modes differ. A title overrun hands control of your copy to Amazon’s AI. A bullet overrun costs marginal visibility. A backend overrun silently kills the entire field, which is why the 249-byte limit still deserves more attention than any other number on this page.

How Have Amazon Character Limits Changed Over Time?

Year	Change	Impact
Pre-2016	5000 character backend limit	Era of keyword stuffing. Sellers crammed every variant into the field.
Aug 2017	250 byte limit enforced	The modern byte-based limit was established.
July 2021	HTML deprecated in descriptions	Descriptions became plain text only.
Feb 2024	500 byte expansion (some categories)	Inconsistent rollout. 249 bytes remains the safest default.
Aug 2024	Bullet point requirements tightened	10-255 characters per bullet, minimum 3 bullets, no end punctuation. Amazon began rewriting non-compliant bullets.
Jan 2025	Title policy update	200-char cap enforced at save, banned special characters, max two repeats per word. Apparel tightened to 125.
June 2026	75-character title rule announced	Announced June 10 via Seller Central News, alongside the new Item Highlights field.
July 27, 2026	75-character limit enforced	All categories except media. Old category caps superseded. Non-compliant titles gradually rewritten by Amazon’s AI.
Aug 10, 2026	Item Highlights display rollout	Highlights (up to 125 searchable characters) begin appearing below titles on desktop and mobile.

A lot of older blog posts still cite 200-character titles, 5,000-character backend fields, or HTML formatting in descriptions. All three are wrong as of mid-2026. The 2024 backend expansion to 500 bytes applies only to some categories and was never rolled out consistently across marketplaces, which is why 249 bytes remains the safest universal default.

FAQ - Amazon Character Limits Questions

What is the Amazon title character limit?

75 characters including spaces, in every category except media, since July 27, 2026. Media (Books, Music, Video, DVD) keeps the old 200-character rule. Titles over the limit are gradually rewritten with Amazon’s AI recommendations.

What is Amazon’s Item Highlights field?

A new field introduced with the July 2026 title change. It takes up to 125 additional characters for details that no longer fit in the title (materials, use cases, compatibility). It’s indexed for search and displays below the title, generally only when the title is under 75 characters.

What is the Amazon bullet points character limit?

Amazon’s style guidelines call for 10-255 characters per bullet (the flat file technically accepts 500). Amazon only indexes the first 1,000 bytes across all five bullets combined, so a clean target is roughly 200 characters per bullet.

What is the Amazon backend keywords limit?

249 bytes in the US, UK, and EU. 500 bytes in Japan. 200 bytes in India. Going one byte over de-indexes every backend keyword on the listing.

Is Amazon’s limit bytes or characters?

Both, depending on the field. Titles, bullets, and descriptions are character limits. Backend search terms are byte limits. ASCII characters are 1 byte, umlauts are 2 bytes, Japanese is 3 bytes, emojis are 4+ bytes.

Why are Amazon keywords not indexing?

The most common cause is exceeding 249 bytes in the backend search terms field. Amazon silently stops indexing the field when this happens. A byte counter will tell you for sure, especially if you’re using non-ASCII characters.

What is the Amazon product description character limit?

2,000 characters. HTML formatting hasn’t been supported since 2021, so descriptions are plain text only.

How many characters show on Amazon mobile?

Mobile search results used to truncate titles around 70-80 characters. Under the 75-character rule a compliant title displays close to fully, which is a big part of why Amazon made the change. Brand and primary product type still belong up front.

Does Amazon count spaces in character limits?

Yes. Spaces count toward both character and byte limits. Commas between backend keywords are unnecessary; a space is enough.

Conclusion

Three rules cover most of the risk on this page. Titles are capped at 75 characters everywhere except media, and titles left over the limit get rewritten by Amazon’s AI, so the rewrite happens on your terms or on Amazon’s. Backend search terms are measured in bytes, not characters, and one byte over 249 silently de-indexes the entire field in US/UK/EU. Bullet points are indexed only for the first 1,000 bytes across all five.

Two actions worth taking right now: check which of your titles still exceed 75 characters (each one is queued for an AI rewrite you didn’t approve), and audit the backend search terms on your top-selling ASINs. If any exceed 249 bytes, you’re losing search visibility today. For a complete listing audit beyond just byte counts, the Amazon listing audit tool scores any ASIN on title, bullets, backend, and image fields and prioritizes the highest-impact fixes. For a deeper read on the surrounding optimization workflow, see Amazon listing optimization.