MySQL: Large VARCHAR vs. TEXT? I've got a messages table in MySQL which records messages between users. Apart from the typical ids and message types (all integer types) I need to save the actual message text as either VARCHAR or TEXT. I'm setting a front-end limit of 3000 characters which means the messages would never be inserted into the db as longer than this. Is there a rationale for going with either VARCHAR(3000) or TEXT? There's something about just writing VARCHAR(3000) that feels somewhat counter-intuitive.