Username Generator & Handle Rules Checker

About the Username Generator & Handle Rules Checker

Type your name — and, if you like, what you post about — to get dozens of handle ideas: your name joined with underscores or periods, initials, short forms, a number of your choice, and words that fit the style you pick (clean, playful, gaming or professional). More ideas shows a fresh set without repeating ones you have seen.

Every idea is checked against the username rules of Instagram (and Threads), X, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Discord, Reddit, Snapchat and Bluesky: length, allowed characters, and how a handle may start and end. Each one gets a profile link for every platform where it fits, so you can see whether the name is taken. There is no automatic availability lookup — that would mean sending your ideas to those platforms — and Check a handle tests any name you already have in mind.

Common uses

• Finding a handle that is valid on every platform you use before you start a creator account.
• Gamer tags for Twitch, Discord and gaming platforms.
• Professional first.last-style handles for LinkedIn-style profiles, portfolios and YouTube.
• Checking why a platform rejects a username you typed.

Username rules by platform

• Instagram and Threads: up to 30 characters — letters A–Z, digits, underscores and periods, with a period never first, last or doubled. Instagram’s Help Centre does not publish these rules; they come from Instagram’s website code: its sign-up form allows 30 characters, and the pattern it uses to recognise @usernames accepts exactly these characters. Threads uses your Instagram username.
• X: up to 15 characters — letters A–Z, digits and underscores. X’s help centre adds that usernames containing the words “X” or “Admin” cannot be claimed unless they are official X accounts.
• TikTok: letters, numbers, underscores and periods, and a period cannot be last. TikTok’s help page gives no length limit, so none is checked, and it does not say which alphabets count as letters, so letters outside A–Z are marked “may be refused”. You can change it once every 30 days.
• YouTube handles: 3–30 characters (Han or Hangul only: 1–10; Ethiopic, Hiragana or Katakana only: 2–20) of letters and numbers from YouTube’s supported languages, with _ - . and · allowed but not first or last. Handles must not look like web addresses or phone numbers.
• Twitch: 4–25 characters — letters, digits and underscores, starting with a letter or digit — the check run by Twitch’s own sign-up and change-username forms.
• Discord: 2–32 characters — lowercase letters, digits, underscores and periods, never two periods in a row.
• Reddit: 3–20 characters — letters, digits, underscores and hyphens (from Reddit’s open-source code; its help centre lists no rules). Reddit says a username can never be changed, and a deleted one does not become available again.
• Snapchat: 3–15 characters — Latin letters, numbers and one of - _ or . — starting with a letter and ending with a letter or number, and never a phone number. It can be changed once a year.
• Bluesky: the part before .bsky.social is 3–18 letters, digits and hyphens, not starting or ending with a hyphen; Bluesky’s server also reserves names such as admin, help and support.

Checking whether a name is free

Open the profile link for each platform. A page saying the account does not exist is a good sign, but not a guarantee:

• X’s help centre explains that suspended or deactivated accounts keep their usernames for a while, so a name can look free and still be refused.
• Reddit never releases the username of a deleted account.
• Platforms reserve some names (Bluesky publishes its list in its source code) and refuse names that break their community rules.

The only sure test is to try the name in the platform’s own sign-up or edit-profile screen.

Tips for a handle people remember

• Short and easy to say beats clever: people type what they heard.
• Use the same handle everywhere if you can — tick Only show ideas that fit every platform.
• Underscores and periods are hard to say aloud; joining without a separator is easiest to share.
• Avoid your birth year or other personal details. Numbers-for-letters swaps (pr1y4) suit gaming handles but are hard to type from memory.

Limitations

• No availability check: this page never contacts any platform. Use the profile links, or try the name in the platform’s app.
• Ideas use letters A–Z and digits only. Names in other alphabets are left out; YouTube handles accept letters from YouTube’s supported languages, and TikTok’s help page does not say which alphabets it accepts — test such handles in Check a handle.
• Platforms can change their rules at any time, and also refuse names for reasons they do not publish (trademarks, impersonation, offensive words).
• Where a rule is unclear — Snapchat’s “one of -, _, or .”, X’s rule on the word “X”, YouTube’s count for some scripts, TikTok’s letters outside A–Z — the handle is marked “may be refused” rather than failed.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.