What is the maximum length of a URL in different browsers?

Question

• What is the maximum length of a URL for each browser?
• Is a maximum URL length part of the HTTP specification?

Answer 1

Short answer - de facto limit of 2000 characters

If you keep URLs under 2000 characters, they'll work in virtually any combination of client and server software, and any search engine.

For specific use cases, longer URLs can be considered. Outside of search engines, 8000 characters offers wide compatibility as of 2023. Read on for all the details...

Longer answer - first, the standards...

The original HTTP/1.1 specification, published in 1999, RFC 2616, said in section 3.2.1:

The HTTP protocol does not place any a priori limit on the length of a URI. Servers MUST be able to handle the URI of any resource they serve, and SHOULD be able to handle URIs of unbounded length if they provide GET-based forms that could generate such URIs. A server SHOULD return 414 (Request-URI Too Long) status if a URI is longer than the server can handle (see section 10.4.15).

In 2014, this was obsoleted by an updated specification largely to match actual usage, RFC 7230; it suggests:

Various ad hoc limitations on request-line length are found in practice. It is RECOMMENDED that all HTTP senders and recipients support, at a minimum, request-line lengths of 8000 octets.

In 2022, a new update was published, defining HTTP semantics independently of HTTP version (HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, HTTP/3). RFC 9110, section 4.1, says:

It is RECOMMENDED that all senders and recipients support, at a minimum, URIs with lengths of 8000 octets in protocol elements. Note that this implies some structures and on-wire representations (for example, the request line in HTTP/1.1) will necessarily be larger in some cases.

...and the reality

That's what the standards say. For the reality, there was an article on boutell.com (link goes to Internet Archive backup) that discussed what individual browser and server implementations will support. The executive summary is:

Extremely long URLs are usually a mistake. URLs over 2,000 characters will not work in the most popular web browsers. Don't use them if you intend your site to work for the majority of Internet users.

(Note: this is a quote from an article written in 2006, but in 2015 IE's declining usage means that longer URLs do work for the majority. However, IE still has the limitation...)

Internet Explorer's limitations...

IE8's maximum URL length is 2083 chars, and it seems IE9 has a similar limit.

I've tested IE10 and the address bar will only accept 2083 chars. You can click a URL which is longer than this, but the address bar will still only show 2083 characters of this link.

There's a nice writeup on the IE Internals blog which goes into some of the background to this.

There are mixed reports IE11 supports longer URLs - see comments below. Given some people report issues, the general advice still stands.

Search engines like URLs < 2048 chars...

Be aware that the sitemaps protocol, which allows a site to inform search engines about available pages, has a limit of 2048 characters in a URL. If you intend to use sitemaps, a limit has been decided for you! (see Calin-Andrei Burloiu's answer below)

There's also some research from 2010 into the maximum URL length that search engines will crawl and index. They found the limit was 2047 chars, which appears allied to the sitemap protocol spec. However, they also found the Google SERP tool wouldn't cope with URLs longer than 1855 chars.

CDNs have limits

CDNs also impose limits on URI length, and will return a 414 Too long request when these limits are reached, for example:

• Fastly 8Kb
• CloudFront 8Kb
• Cloudflare 32Kb

(credit to timrs2998 for providing that info in the comments)

Additional browser roundup

I tested the following against an Apache 2.4 server configured with a very large LimitRequestLine and LimitRequestFieldSize.

Browser     Address bar   document.location
                          or anchor tag
------------------------------------------
Chrome          32779           >64k
Android          8192           >64k
Firefox          >300k          >300k
Safari           >64k           >64k
IE11             2047           5120
Edge 16          2047          10240

See also this answer from Matas Vaitkevicius below.

Is this information up to date?

This is a popular question, and as the original research is ~14 years old I'll try to keep it up to date: As of Sep 2023, the advice still stands. While modern browsers will support longer URLs, search engines do not so the headline figure remains "under 2000 chars"

Answer 2

The longest URLs I came across are data URLs

Example image URL from Google image results (11747 characters)

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

Answer 3

I wrote this test that keeps on adding 'a' to parameter until the browser fails

C# part:

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get)]
public ActionResult ParamTest(string x)
{
    ViewBag.TestLength = 0;
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(x))
    {
        System.IO.File.WriteAllLines("c:/result.txt",
                       new[] {Request.UserAgent, x.Length.ToString()});
        ViewBag.TestLength = x.Length + 1;
    }

    return View();
}

View:

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(function() {
        var text = "a";
        for (var i = 0; i < parseInt(@ViewBag.TestLength)-1; i++) {
            text += "a";
        }

        document.location.href = "http://localhost:50766/Home/ParamTest?x=" + text;
    });
</script>

PART 1

On Chrome I got:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/43.0.2357.130 Safari/537.36
2046

It then blew up with:

HTTP Error 404.15 - Not Found The request filtering module is configured to deny a request where the query string is too long.

Same on Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)
2046

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
2046

PART 2

I went easy mode and added additional limits to IISExpress applicationhost.config and web.config setting maxQueryStringLength="32768".

Chrome failed with message 'Bad Request - Request Too Long

HTTP Error 400. The size of the request headers is too long.

after 7744 characters.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/43.0.2357.130 Safari/537.36
7744

PART 3

Added

<headerLimits>
    <add header="Content-type" sizeLimit="32768" />
</headerLimits>

which didn't help at all. I finally decided to use fiddler to remove the referrer from header.

static function OnBeforeRequest(oSession: Session) {
    if (oSession.url.Contains("localhost:50766")) {
        oSession.RequestHeaders.Remove("Referer");
    }

Which did nicely.

Chrome: got to 15613 characters. (I guess it's a 16K limit for IIS)

And it failed again with:

<BODY><h2>Bad Request - Request Too Long</h2>
<hr><p>HTTP Error 400. The size of the request headers is too long.</p>


Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/43.0.2357.130 Safari/537.36
15613

Firefox:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
15708

Internet Explorer 8 failed with iexplore.exe crashing.

After 2505

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)
2505

Android Emulator

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 5.1; Android SDK built for x86 Build/LKY45) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/39.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36
7377

Internet Explorer 11

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/7.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C)
4043

Internet Explorer 10

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/6.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C)
4043

Internet Explorer 9

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/5.0)
4043

Answer 4

WWW FAQs: What is the maximum length of a URL? has its own answer based on empirical testing and research. The short answer is that going over 2048 characters makes Internet Explorer unhappy and thus this is the limit you should use. See the page for a long answer.

Answer 5

On Apple platforms (iOS/macOS/tvOS/watchOS), the limit may be a 2 GB long URL scheme, as seen by this comment in the source code of Swift:

// Make sure the URL string isn't too long.
// We're limiting it to 2GB for backwards compatibility with 32-bit executables using NS/CFURL
if ( (urlStringLength > 0) && (urlStringLength <= INT_MAX) )
{
...

---

On iOS, I've tested and confirmed that even a 300+ MB long URL is accepted. You can try such a long URL like this in Objective-C:

NSString *path = [@"a:" stringByPaddingToLength:314572800 withString:@"a" startingAtIndex:0];
NSString *js = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"window.location.href = \"%@\";", path];
[self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:js];

And catch if it succeed with:

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType
{
    NSLog(@"length: %@", @(request.URL.absoluteString.length));
    return YES;
}

Answer 6

There is really no universal maximum URL length. The max length is determined only by what the client browser chooses to support, which varies widely. The 2,083 limit is only present in Internet Explorer (all versions up to 7.0). The max length in Firefox and Safari seems to be unlimited, although instability occurs with URLs reaching around 65,000 characters. Opera seems to have no max URL length whatsoever, and doesn't suffer instability at extremely long lengths.

Answer 7

The URI RFC (of which URLs are a subset) doesn't define a maximum length, however, it does recommend that the hostname part of the URI (if applicable) not exceed 255 characters in length:

URI producers should use names that conform to the DNS syntax, even when use of DNS is not immediately apparent, and should limit these names to no more than 255 characters in length.

As noted in other posts though, some browsers have a practical limitation on the length of a URL.

Answer 8

The HTTP 1.1 specification says:

URIs in HTTP can be represented in absolute form or relative to some
known base URI [11], depending upon the context of their use. The two
forms are differentiated by the fact that absolute URIs always begin
with a scheme name followed by a colon. For definitive information on
URL syntax and semantics, see "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax and Semantics," RFC 2396 [42] (which replaces RFCs 1738 [4] and RFC 1808 [11]). This specification adopts the definitions of "URI-reference", "absoluteURI", "relativeURI", "port",
"host","abs_path", "rel_path", and "authority" from that
specification.

The HTTP protocol does not place any a priori limit on the length of
a URI. Servers MUST be able to handle the URI of any resource they serve, and SHOULD be able to handle URIs of unbounded length if they provide GET-based forms that could generate such URIs.* A server SHOULD return 414 (Request-URI Too Long) status if a URI is longer than the server can handle (see section 10.4.15).

Note: Servers ought to be cautious about depending on URI lengths above 255 bytes, because some older client or proxy implementations might not properly support these lengths.

As mentioned by @Brian, the HTTP clients (e.g. browsers) may have their own limits, and HTTP servers will have different limits.

Answer 9

Microsoft Support says "Maximum URL length is 2,083 characters in Internet Explorer".

IE has problems with URLs longer than that. Firefox seems to work fine with >4k chars.

Answer 10

In URL as UI Jakob Nielsen recommends:

the social interface to the Web relies on email when users want to recommend Web pages to each other, and email is the second-most common way users get to new sites (search engines being the most common): make sure that all URLs on your site are less than 78 characters long so that they will not wrap across a line feed.

This is not the maximum but I'd consider this a practical maximum if you want your URL to be shared.

Answer 11

Sitemaps protocol, which is a way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites (also used by Google in Webmaster Tools), supports URLs with less than 2048 characters. So if you are planning to use this feature for Search Engine Optimization, take this into account.

Answer 12

ASP.NET 2 and SQL Server reporting services 2005 have a limit of 2028. I found this out the hard way, where my dynamic URL generator would not pass over some parameters to a report beyond that point. This was under Internet Explorer 8.

Answer 13

Why is the Internet Explorer limit only 2K while IIS has a limit of 16K? I don't think it makes sense.

So I want to start an experiment about Ajax request URL size limits.

I have set my Tomcat HTTP connector's maxHttpHeaderSize="1048576". And prepared a very long URL.

Then I send a request with the long URL like the following:

var url="/ajax/url-length.jsp";
jQuery.ajax(url,{data:{q:"0".repeat(1048000-url.length-4)}});

jQuery reports done. Tomcat reports the URL requested is 1048015 bytes. It was tested with Chrome 50 and Internet Explorer 11.

So web browsers won't truncate or limit your URL intentionally when sending Ajax requests.

Answer 14

Limit request line directive sets the maximum length of a URL. By default, it is set to 8190, which gives you a lot of room. However other servers and some browses, limit the length more.

Because all parameters are passed on the URL line, items that were in password of hidden fields will also be displayed in the URL of course. Neither mobile should be used for real security measures and should be considered cosmetic security at best.

Answer 15

It seems that Chrome at least has raised this limit. I pasted 20,000 characters into the bookmarklet and it took it.

Answer 16

I have experience with SharePoint 2007, 2010 and there is a limit of the length URL you can create from the server side in this case SharePoint, so it depends mostly on, 1) the client (browser, version, and OS) and 2) the server technology, IIS, Apache, etc.

Answer 17

The official documentation specifies a maximum length of 2048 characters.

Maximum length of a URL in different browsers:

• Google Chrome - Google Chrome permits a maximum URL length of 2MB (2,097,152 characters).

• Mozilla Firefox - In Firefox, a URL can be as lengthy as it needs to be, but beyond 65,536 characters, the location bar no longer shows the URL.

• Edge: Edge permits a maximum URL length of 2083 characters, although the path portion of the URL cannot exceed 2048 characters.

• Opera: Opera permits an unlimited URL length.

• Safari: A page will display an error if the URL is longer than 80000 characters.

John Müeller advised that URLs should be a maximum of 1,000 characters in length, otherwise problems could arise.

For SEO purposes, use short and meaningful URLs for both the browser and the user as well..

Thank you...

Answer 18

According to the HTTP spec, there is no limit to a URL's length. Keep your URLs under 2048 characters; this will ensure the URLs work in all clients & server configurations. Also, search engines like URLs to remain under approximately 2000 characters.

Answer 19

The maximum length of a URL varies across different browsers and servers, but most modern browsers can handle URLs that are several thousand characters long. However, for practical and compatibility reasons, it's generally advisable to keep URLs well within these limits. Here’s a summary of URL length limits in different browsers:

Browser Limits

1. Internet Explorer (IE)

   • URL Length Limit: 2,083 characters
   • Note: Historically, IE has the lowest limit. If the URL exceeds 2,083 characters, it will not load.

2. Google Chrome

   • URL Length Limit: Around 32,767 characters
   • Note: Chrome can handle URLs up to nearly 32k characters, but this is far beyond typical practical usage.

3. Mozilla Firefox

   • URL Length Limit: Around 65,536 characters
   • Note: Firefox supports very long URLs, significantly higher than what is usually necessary.

4. Safari

   • URL Length Limit: Approximately 80,000 characters
   • Note: Safari can handle extremely long URLs as well, similar to Firefox.

5. Microsoft Edge

   • URL Length Limit: Approximately 2,083 characters (similar to IE for compatibility)
   • Note: Edge is built on the Chromium engine, so it can handle longer URLs, but for compatibility, sticking to lower limits is safer.

6. Opera

   • URL Length Limit: Around 32,000 characters
   • Note: Opera, like Chrome, can handle very long URLs.

Server and Practical Considerations

• Server Limitations: Some web servers impose their own URL length limits. For example, many Apache server configurations have a default limit of 8,192 bytes (8 KB) for the URL.
• Search Engines: For SEO and usability, it’s advisable to keep URLs below 2,000 characters. Search engines like Google may truncate or ignore very long URLs.

General Recommendations

• Stay Under 2,000 Characters: For compatibility with all browsers and servers, it's a good rule of thumb to keep URLs under 2,000 characters.
• Usability and SEO: Shorter URLs are more user-friendly and better for SEO. They are easier to read, share, and manage.
• Avoid URL Overhead: Long URLs can cause issues with copying and pasting, email clients truncating URLs, and general readability.

Conclusion

While modern browsers can handle URLs up to tens of thousands of characters, it’s best to keep URLs concise and well under 2,000 characters for compatibility and practical purposes. This ensures that your URLs are accessible and functional across all browsers and servers.