LinkedIn connection note: 10 examples and a character counter

LinkedIn sets different limits depending on the type of message and the type of account. Here are the ones its official help center publishes, checked on September 30, 2026.

The number of notes matters as much as their length. The current help page says a free account can personalize up to three connection requests per month, and that Premium members can personalize every invitation. An older help page still mentioned five notes a month and 300 characters on Premium; the current page keeps 200 characters for every account. LinkedIn also caps the number of invitations sent each week, without publishing an official figure in its help center.

1. Give one precise reason to accept: a post you read, a mutual contact, an event, a shared background.
2. Rely on a true, verifiable fact. Never claim you met the person or know a colleague if it is not the case.
3. Use their first name, spelled correctly.
4. Ask for nothing: no call, no demo, no link. The note exists to get accepted, not to sell.
5. Stay under 200 characters: it is LinkedIn's limit for every account, and a note is read in a few seconds, often on a phone.
6. Match the tone to the person: relaxed with a freelancer or a startup founder, more formal with a large company or a traditional industry.

Here are ten notes sorted by situation. The names are fictional and every note fits under LinkedIn's 200-character limit, spaces included. Copy the structure, not the text: a note is only worth something if the fact it cites is true for the person you invite.

• You have no precise reason. An invitation with no note beats a generic note like “I would like to grow my network”.
• Your account is free and you have used this month's notes. Keep them for the prospects who really matter.
• The note would pitch your offer. Keep the offer for the conversation, once the person has described a need.
• You are inviting strangers in volume with no link to you. The first message, sent after acceptance, has no published limit and does this job better.

If the person's profile shows nothing you can use, invite them without a note, then write a short first message once the connection is accepted. The first message generator helps you write it.

The counter counts every character the way a browser text field does: letters, spaces, punctuation and line breaks. An emoji can count as two characters. Our counter counts it that way to be safe: if LinkedIn counts it as one, you simply keep a little margin.

It also shows the word count and how much room you have left. Past the limit, it tells you by how much. Nothing is sent: the text stays in your browser.

Invitations are decided quickly. In our 2026 study (in French), 64% of accepted invitations are accepted on the day they are sent, and 92.8% of acceptances have arrived after one week. Once the connection is accepted, the first message takes over: LinkedIn publishes no limit for it, but first messages under 200 characters got a 50.5% reply rate in the study, against 19.6% above 700 characters.

The counter's first message mode therefore uses 200 as a target, not a limit. For an InMail, written to someone outside your network with paid credits, the subject is capped at 200 characters and the body at 1,900; LinkedIn's own help center recommends keeping InMail concise.

To check whether your invitations get accepted often enough, compare your numbers with the study benchmarks using the LinkedIn acceptance rate calculator.