What’s the Maximum Length For MySQL TEXT Field Types
MySQL engine supports 4 TEXT field types
- TINYTEXT
- TEXT
- MEDIUMTEXT
- LONGTEXT
MyISAM tables in MySQL have a maximum size of a row of 65,535 bytes, so all the data in a row must fit within this limit.
However, the TEXT types are stored outside the table itself and only contribute 1 to 4 bytes towards this limit.
TEXT data types are also able to store much more data than VARCHAR and CHAR text types so TEXT types are what you need to use when storing web page or similar content in a database.
The maximum amount of data that can be stored in each data type is as follows:
TINYTEXT 256 bytes TEXT 65,535 bytes ~64kb MEDIUMTEXT 16,777,215 bytes ~16MB LONGTEXT 4,294,967,295 bytes ~4GB
In most circumstances the TEXT type is probably sufficient, but if you are coding a content management system it’s probably best to use the MEDIUMTEXT type for longer pages to ensure there are no issues with data size limits.
