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The documentation says that CharField() should be used for smaller strings and TextField() should be used for larger strings.
Okay, but where is the line drawn between "small" and "large"? What's going on under the hood here that makes this the case?
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CharField is a commonly-defined field used as an attribute to reference a text-based database column when defining Model classes with the Django ORM. The Django project has wonderful documentation for CharField and all of the other column fields.
TextField is a field used to create an arbitrary amount of text characters in a database column defined by the Django ORM. The Django project has wonderful documentation for TextField and all of the other column fields. Note that TextField is defined within the django.
CharField since CharField has a max length of 255 characters while TextField can hold more than 255 characters.
It's a difference between RDBMS's varchar (or similar) — those are usually specified with a maximum length, and might be more efficient in terms of performance or storage — and text (or similar) types — those are usually limited only by hardcoded implementation limits (not a DB schema).
PostgreSQL 9, specifically, states that "There is no performance difference among these three types", but AFAIK there are some differences in e.g. MySQL, so this is something to keep in mind.
A good rule of thumb is that you use CharField when you need to limit the maximum length, TextField otherwise.
This is not really Django-specific, also.
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