How Many Hashtags Should You Use on TikTok for Business?
TikTok caps you at 5 hashtags. Which 5 to use as a local business, and how much they really change your views.
By the Next5 team · · 8 min read
The 3-to-5 answer you keep reading treats the number as your choice. It is not your choice any more. TikTok set it, and the advice has not caught up.
The number is 5, and TikTok picked it
Since August 2025, TikTok stops you at 5 hashtags per post. Add a sixth and the app shows "Maximum 5 hashtags. Use accurate hashtags to get more views." TikTok never put out a press release about it. Asked through its own in-app chat, the reason given was to cut down the hashtags in a caption so viewers focus on the content instead.
So the question is no longer how many. It is which 5, and whether you bother filling all 5 at all. Use every slot, but only with a tag you would be happy for someone to actually tap.
What hashtags actually do to your views
Worth knowing before you spend 10 minutes on tags. Metricool looked at 2,314,756 TikTok posts from more than 92,000 accounts, comparing January and February 2025 against the same two months in 2026. Posts with at least one hashtag got about 5% more views and a bit over 9% more interactions than posts with none.
That is the honest size of it, and note what the 5% is: the gap between tagging and not tagging at all, since the study compared posts with at least one hashtag against posts with none. In the same study, traffic reaching posts through hashtags grew 114% year over year, which is why tags are still worth the 30 seconds. But video views across TikTok fell 31.30% and reach fell 28.73% in that same year, while people published 72.10% more videos. No hashtag set fixes that. A better first 2 seconds does.
The 5 slots, for a local business
Fill the slots in this order. The examples are for an auto repair shop in Mesa, Arizona, so swap in your own city and trade.
| Slot | What goes in it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Your city | The city or metro you actually serve, not the state | #mesaaz |
| 2. Your trade | What someone would call your job, not your company name | #autorepair |
| 3. The video subject | The specific thing in this clip | #brakepads |
| 4. The question you are answering | How a customer would phrase it | #carmakingnoise |
| 5. Trending, only if it fits | Leave empty when nothing real fits | (often blank) |
Slots 1 and 2 stay the same on every post, so save them in your phone once and paste them. Slots 3 and 4 change with the video, and they are the two that do the work: they tell TikTok what this specific clip is about. Slot 5 stays empty most weeks, and an empty slot is better than a tag that has nothing to do with your video.
Specific beats big. Metricool's own conclusion after the study was to use 1 to 5 specific, descriptive tags, because the more specific the hashtag, the better the match. A narrow tag brings fewer people, and those are the ones who might book you.
Does a city hashtag get you local customers?
Partly. A city tag is one more piece of information telling TikTok this post is about your area, and TikTok's search leans on the video description, so the caption is where it counts. But TikTok also runs a local feed in the US that surfaces nearby posts using a viewer's location, the topic of the post and how recently it went up. That runs on location data and relevance, not on your hashtag. So a city tag helps you get found, it does not put you in front of your neighbours on its own.
The practical version: name your city out loud in the video, write it in the caption, and tag it. Three signals beat one.
Skip #fyp
TikTok publishes how its recommendation system works. It lists three things: what viewers interact with, video information ("details like captions, sounds, and hashtags"), and device and account settings. There is no tag in that list that puts you on the For You feed. The same page also says that "neither follower count nor whether the account has had previous high-performing videos are direct factors in the recommendation system", which is good news for a shop with 40 followers.
#fyp, #foryou and #viral describe a place in the app, not your video. They tell TikTok nothing about who should see a brake job in Mesa. With only 5 slots, each one of those costs you a tag that could have described your work.
Caption or comments?
Caption. Hashtags dropped in the first comment are less effective, because TikTok's search leans on the video description. Keep the tags at the end of the caption so the first line stays readable: that first line is doing more for you than any tag.
One more thing from the same study: posts that include a question get 26.19% more comments. A question in the caption is worth more than a sixth hashtag you cannot add anyway.
Common mistakes
- Pasting the same 5 tags on every post. Slots 1 and 2 should repeat. Slots 3 and 4 should not, because they are the only ones describing this video.
- Filling all 5 slots with the broadest tags you can find. #smallbusiness says nothing about your video. Your city plus your trade narrows it to people who could actually walk in.
- Chasing a trending tag that has nothing to do with your business. It brings viewers who scroll past in half a second, and that tells TikTok your post is weak.
- Treating tags as the job. Changing your tags will not rescue a post nobody watched past 2 seconds.
- Judging a tag after one post. Give any change 2 weeks of posting before you call it, the same way you would test a posting time.
How to tell if your tags are working
Open any post on your profile and tap into its analytics. The views are broken down by where they came from, and the list of sources includes Search and Hashtag alongside For You, Following, Sound and Personal profile. Those two lines are the ones your tags affect.
Read them across a month, not across one post. If the Search and Hashtag shares climb while you tag the city, the trade and the subject, keep going. If they sit near zero while your views are fine, your tags are not what is bringing people in, and that is worth knowing too: it means your next hour goes into the video, not the caption. Sound is another line in that same list, and on a business account your track comes from the Commercial Sounds library.
Posts also finish fast: a TikTok post collects 96% of its total reach within its first 10 days. So one post resolves quickly, but you still need several before you judge a tag. Compare them at the same age, the way the guide to reading your analytics does at 48 hours. Keep the posting steady with the free 30-day content calendar, and if filming is the hard part, how to make a slideshow on TikTok gets you a post out of photos you already have.
Sources
- Search Engine Land: TikTok limits posts to five hashtags
- MediaPost: TikTok Limits Hashtags As Algorithms Become More Sophisticated, August 21 2025
- Website Builder Expert: You cannot use more than 5 hashtags on TikTok now
- Taskant: TikTok hashtags guide, limits, #fyp and trends, 2026
- TikTok Newsroom: How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou
- Metricool TikTok Study 2026, 2,314,756 posts from 92,000+ accounts
- Metricool: TikTok local feed
- Sprout Social: TikTok hashtags
- Iconosquare: TikTok analytics, the traffic source categories
Questions
How many hashtags can you use on TikTok?
Five. TikTok started capping posts at 5 hashtags in August 2025 and shows "Maximum 5 hashtags" when you try to add a sixth. It was never formally announced, but it is still in force.
Is 30 hashtags too many on TikTok?
You cannot post 30 any more. TikTok stops you at 5. Even before the cap, a long list of vague tags gave TikTok mixed signals about who your video was for.
Do hashtags still work on TikTok?
They help a little. Across 2.3 million posts, ones with at least one hashtag got about 5% more views and just over 9% more interactions. Traffic arriving through hashtags grew 114% year over year, so they are worth filling in, but they will not carry a weak video.
Does #fyp do anything?
No documented benefit. TikTok's own description of its recommendation system lists interactions, video information and device settings, with no tag that unlocks the For You feed. #fyp also says nothing about your video, so it wastes one of your 5 slots.
Should hashtags go in the caption or the first comment?
The caption. Hashtags in the comments are less effective because TikTok's search leans on the video description. Put them at the end of the caption so your first line stays readable.
Should a local business use city hashtags on TikTok?
Yes, one. Tag the city or metro you serve, not the state, and say the city in the video and the caption too. Note that TikTok's local feed in the US picks nearby posts from location data, topic and recency, not from your hashtag.
Can I use the same hashtags on every TikTok post?
Keep 2 fixed, your city and your trade, and change the rest. The tags that describe the specific video are the ones telling TikTok who to show it to, so repeating an identical set on every post throws that away.
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