Example: a tag set and its character count
Here are 18 tags for a video about making cold brew at home, most important first. YouTube counts them as 321 of 500 characters: the letters, 17 commas, and 2 characters for each of the 16 tags that contain a space. The generator lists tags the same way, so if the list is too long it drops the least important tags at the end.
18 tags, 321 / 500 characters
cold brew, cold brew coffee, how to make cold brew, cold brew at home, cold brew recipe, homemade cold brew, cold brew without equipment, cold brew concentrate, coldbrew, cold brew ratio, iced coffee, iced coffee at home, coffee recipes, home barista, coffee tips, easy coffee recipe, summer drinks, coffee
How YouTube counts the 500 characters
The limit covers the whole list, not each tag. Three rules decide the count:
1. Every character of every tag counts, spaces included.
2. The commas between tags count.
3. A tag with a space is treated as if it were wrapped in quotation marks, and the two quotes count.
So "cold brew coffee" takes 18 characters, not 16. The counter under the generated tags applies all three rules, and updates when you remove a tag.
Sources: YouTube Data API reference, videos resource (snippet.tags, 500-character limit and how it is counted), and YouTube Help, "Edit video settings" (tags, title and description limits), checked October 2026.
What to do with your tags
Copy the list and paste it into the Tags field in YouTube Studio. Remove any tag that does not describe the video before you copy: every chip has a remove button and the count updates.
Then spend the time you saved on the title and the first line of the description, which viewers actually see.