Listing character limits by marketplace

If you sell the same product on more than one marketplace, the limits are the first thing that breaks. A title that fits comfortably on Amazon is more than double what eBay accepts. Writing to the largest limit and trimming later usually means rewriting rather than trimming, because the words you cut were load-bearing.

Here are the actual numbers, and — more usefully — which of them you should write to.

The limits, side by side

| Marketplace | Title | Bullet point | Description | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Amazon | 200 max, ~80 recommended | 500 each × 5 | 2,000 | | Walmart | 200 max, 50–75 recommended | 500 each | 4,000 | | Etsy | 140 max, ~60 recommended | No bullet field | No practical cap | | eBay | 80 — hard cap | No bullet field | No practical cap |

Two things stand out.

eBay's 80 characters is the binding constraint if you sell across all four. It is a hard cap with no flexibility. Draft to 80 and expand upward for the others — the reverse never works cleanly.

Amazon and Walmart both publish maximums far above what they recommend. That is not an oversight. Both have tightened enforcement against keyword-stuffed titles, and writing to the maximum is a reliable way to produce a title that ranks for nothing and reads badly.

Check your own copy against all four at once with the free listing character counter. It runs in your browser and stores nothing.

Why the maximum is never the target

Amazon allows 200 characters in a title and truncates display at roughly 80 on mobile — where most traffic now lands. So the 120 characters past that point are indexed but invisible to the person deciding whether to click.

Walmart's style guide asks for 50 to 75 and actively penalises stuffing through its content quality score. Etsy weights the first 40 characters most heavily and truncates around there on mobile too.

The pattern is consistent across all four: the platforms with the most generous limits are not asking you to use them.

Bullets are counted individually

Amazon's 500-character bullet limit applies to each of the five bullets, not to all five combined. Sellers routinely under-use this, writing five short fragments when they have 2,500 characters of structured space available.

They are still better short than long — bullets read badly on mobile past about 200 characters — but the constraint is not where most people assume.

Etsy and eBay have no bullet field at all. They use tags and item specifics instead, which are structured data rather than prose. Pasting your Amazon bullets into an eBay description is not a substitute for filling in item specifics, and it is why a lot of cross-listed eBay inventory never appears in filtered search.

Limits vary by category

The figures above are the common defaults each marketplace publishes. Amazon and Walmart both enforce shorter titles in some categories than their headline maximum suggests.

Check your category style guide in Seller Central before writing to any limit. The generic number is a ceiling, not a permission.

Bytes, not characters — one important exception

Everything above is counted in characters. There is one field that is not.

Amazon's backend search terms field is capped at 250 bytes. In UTF-8 an accented Latin character costs two bytes and a CJK character costs three, so a German or Japanese seller has far less room than the number suggests — and Amazon truncates silently.

That distinction has its own guide: the 250-byte field, explained properly, and its own free tool, the backend keyword byte counter.

A workable process for multi-marketplace listings

1. Draft to eBay's 80 characters first. It is the hardest constraint. If the core proposition does not fit in 80, the problem is the proposition.
2. Expand for Amazon and Walmart, staying near their recommended lengths rather than their maximums.
3. Rewrite for Etsy rather than trimming — Etsy buyers respond to different language, and the first 40 characters carry the weight.
4. Fill the structured fields per platform. Amazon's backend terms, Etsy's thirteen tags, eBay's item specifics, Walmart's attributes. These are not interchangeable and each is that platform's main ranking lever.
5. Check every field before publishing.

Why "write once, paste everywhere" fails

Each of these marketplaces ranks on something different:

• Amazon — backend search terms and semantic relevance
• Walmart — structured attributes and its content quality score
• Etsy — thirteen tags
• eBay — item specifics
• TikTok Shop — video

A single block of copy pasted into all five satisfies none of them. It also fails differently on each: too long for eBay, too stuffed for Walmart, missing tags on Etsy, missing item specifics everywhere.

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Generate per marketplace instead of adapting one listing. ListIQ Pro writes a separate variant for each destination, formatted to that platform's limits and required fields — Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, Shopify and TikTok Shop.

One credit per marketplace, so a product listed on three costs three credits. The free plan includes 10 credits a month with no card required.

ListIQ Pro does not publish to your marketplace account — it produces the listing and you paste it into the platform's own form. Direct publishing is in development.