In this work, we analyze the effect of charge in compact stars considering the limit of the maximum amount of charge they can hold. We find that the global balance of the forces allows a huge charge (~ 10(20) Coulomb) to be present in a neutron star producing a very high electric field (~ 10(21) V/m). We have studied the particular case of a polytropic equation of state and assumed that the charge distribution is proportional to the mass density. The charged stars have large mass and radius as we should expect due to the effect of the repulsive Coulomb force with the M/R ratio increasing with charge. In the limit of the maximum charge the mass goes up to ~ 10 <img id="_x0000_i1026" src="../../img/revistas/bjp/v34n1a/a38img08.gif" align=absbottom>which is much higher than the maximum mass allowed for a neutral compact star. However, the local effect of the forces experienced by a single charged particle, makes it to discharge quickly. This creates a global force imbalance and the system collapses to a charged black hole.