How Many Hashtags to Use On Each Social Media Platform in 2025
Hashtags have been around for nearly 20 years. Despite initial backlash, they are now a staple of Social Media interaction. Hashtags were invented in 2007, with the term ‘#hashtag’ first used by Chris Messina, an American product designer on Twitter. The idea stemmed from chat rooms and separating each group using the # symbol.
18 years on, hashtags and their importance still divide social media users. Some people can’t get enough of hashtags, while others think they’re pointless with today’s advanced social Media algorithms. But who’s right? How many hashtags should you use on Instagram? What about YouTube? …or TikTok? We answer these questions and more below, with a look at each social media platform, so you can hit the hashtag sweetspot.
Benefits of Using Hashtags
There are several benefits of using hashtags on your social media platforms. Let’s take a look at the key ones:
Increase Organic Reach
Using hashtags can help your post reach a wider audience, even those who do not follow you. Hashtags help categorize your posts and get more eyes on your content beyond your followers.
Brand Recognition
Creating branded hashtags for your specific brand such as a slogan, product, or business name is a great way to increase brand awareness. The three best ways branded hashtags can help your brand awareness are:
- Organize your posts in one place – using the same hashtags on your posts regarding the same topic will all be found in one place when searched. See an example below:
- Measure your campaign success – by using hashtags, you can monitor the success of your posts through branded hashtags and compare them to non-branded hashtags. Learn more about measuring hashtags with the button below:
- UGC content – by creating branded hashtags you can see all of your user-generated content who use your branded hashtags so you can be sure to engage with these posts.
- SEO recognition – hashtags can also serve as keywords to make it easier for your content/profile to be found
Join Trends and Conversations
Using hashtags related to your industry is crucial for ensuring your competitors don’t leave you behind. Pay attention to similar brands and users in your field to stay up to date with the hashtags they’re using.
You can find great examples after popular films or TV series are released. See for yourself by searching your favorite show as a hashtag like “#GameofThrones” or “SquidGame”, you’ll see plenty of posts from fans discussing the show and brands getting in on the act.
With these entertainment examples it’s all about joining the fun, but keep an eye out for relevant hashtags related to your niche, like industry events, award shows, or news updates.
Raise Awareness
Hashtags can also be used to market an event or topic and help spread awareness quickly and effectively.
How Many Hashtags to Use on Instagram
Instagram allows users to use up to 30 hashtags, but we recommend using only 3-5 hashtags per post for maximum effectiveness. The best place for your hashtags is at the end of your caption unless the hashtag is a word or phrase that naturally fits in your caption. If you want to use more, putting them in the first comment is the way to go.
Clicking on a hashtag on Instagram will take you to a hashtag page, which features all posts that include that hashtag.
With Metricool, you can also see your top-performing hashtags on Instagram in our Analytics section. Just go to the Instagram analytics section on your Metricool account and scroll down to hashtags.
Instagram Hashtag Considerations
When considering how many hashtags you should use on Instagram, Meta recommends keeping the following factors in mind:
- Posts from private profiles won’t be seen on Instagram hashtag pages.
- Instagram will reject your post if you try to use more than 30 hashtags.
- You can’t use spaces or special characters ($&%/”) in hashtags, but you can use numbers. *
* Metricooler top tip – Use capital letters to separate your words in hashtags, e.g #MetricoolSocialMediaStudy
How Many Hashtags to Use on TikTok
We also recommend using 3-5 hashtags on TikTok. It is important to mix hashtags related to your brand, niche, and trends. For example, if you are a social media marketing company you could use #metricoolers (brand-related), #marketingteams (niche), and #socialmediamarketingtips (trend).
TikTok SEO
How Many Hashtags to Use on YouTube
The number of hashtags on YouTube is very important. YouTube will ignore all of your hashtags if you use over 60. AT Metricool, we believe the sweet spot of hashtags on YouTube is just 2-3 in the video description.
Using location-based hashtags, niche hashtags, and trending hashtags will be best for your YouTube strategy.
Youtube Hashtag Guidelines
It is also important to note that you follow YouTube’s Hashtag Guidelines. Here’s a summary:
- Don’t use spaces
- No over hashtagging
- Hashtags must be related to your content
- Don’t use hashtags to harass or spread hate speech
- No vulgar or explicit words
- Don’t use repetitive sentences or phrases
How Many Hashtags to Use on Facebook
You can use as many hashtags as you want on Facebook but we recommend 0 to 3 hashtags per post. Overusing hashtags on all social media apps comes off as spammy and too salesy, especially to viewers on Facebook.
As you can see in our example below, we did not use any hashtags:
Facebook also has a hashtag page that you can use to find all posts that feature that hashtag.
How Many Hashtags to Use on Twitter (X)
Before we look at how many hashtags to use on Twitter, we must address the elephant in the room. Yes, Twitter owner Elon Musk recently said hashtags are ugly and irrelevant. And yes, Grok, X’s built-in AI doubled down on this point with a strong attack on hashtags (see both below). But, as has been proven in the past, greater context is needed when considering statements from these two sources.
The X Help Center still lists guidelines for using Hashtags on the platform, so they’re definitely not extinct just yet. Twitter recommends that you use a maximum of 2 hashtags per post.
You can find hashtags on X by typing keywords into the search bar to find relevant posts and accounts.
Metricool Hashtag Generator
To make your life easier, we highly recommend creating a free Metricool account and taking advantage of our Hashtag Generator for TikTok and Instagram. It helps you easily find the most popular and relevant hashtags for your content.
To use the Metricool hashtag generator, just:
- Head to the Planning page and click on Create a New post
- Once you have written your post and added your content click the # icon at the bottom
- Type in your topic or industry
- You will see matching hashtags and their usage count, use this info to choose the most suitable hashtags for your content
Now all you have to do is sign up for your free Metricool account by clicking the button below:
