Avoid getting throttled or blocked in SharePoint Online

Find out about throttling in SharePoint Online and learn how to avoid being throttled or blocked.

Does this sound familiar? You're running an application - for example, to scan files in SharePoint Online - but you get throttled. Or even worse, you get blocked. What's going on and what can you do to make it stop?

What is throttling?

SharePoint Online uses throttling to maintain optimal performance and reliability of the SharePoint Online service. Throttling limits the number of API calls or operations within a time window to prevent overuse of resources.

What happens when you get throttled in SharePoint Online?

When usage limits are exceeded, SharePoint Online throttles any further requests from that client for a short period.

For requests that a user performs directly in the browser, SharePoint Online redirects you to the throttling information page, and the requests fail.

For requests that an application makes, including Microsoft Graph, CSOM or REST calls, SharePoint Online returns HTTP status code 429 ("Too many requests") or 503 ("Server Too Busy") and the requests will fail.

  • HTTP 429 indicates the calling application sent too many requests in a time window and exceeded a predetermined limit.
  • HTTP 503 indicates the service isn't ready to handle the request. The common cause is that the service is experiencing more temporary load spikes than expected.

In both cases, a Retry-After header is included in the response indicating how long the calling application should wait before retrying or making a new request. Throttled requests count towards usage limits, so failure to honor Retry-After may result in more throttling.

If the offending application continues to exceed usage limits, SharePoint Online may completely block the application or specific request patterns from the application; in this case, the application will keep getting HTTP status code 503, and Microsoft will notify the tenant of the block in the Office 365 Message Center.

User Throttling

Throttling limits the number of calls and operations collectively made by applications on behalf of a user to prevent overuse of resources.

That said, it's rare for a user to get throttled in SharePoint Online. The service is robust, and it's designed to handle high volume. If you do get throttled, 99% of the time it is because of custom code, such as custom web parts, complex list view and queries, or custom apps users run. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ways to get throttled, just that they’re less common. For example, one user syncing a large amount of data across 10 machines at the same time could trigger throttling.

Application Throttling

In addition to throttling by user account, limits are also applied to applications in a tenant.

Every application has its own limits in a tenant, which are based on the number of licenses purchased per organization (see the plans listed on SharePoint Limits for licenses included). Every request that an application makes across all API endpoints, including Microsoft Graph, CSOM and REST, counts towards the application’s usage.

SharePoint provides various APIs. Different APIs have different costs depending on the complexity of the API. The cost of APIs is normalized by SharePoint and expressed by resource units. Application’s limits are also defined using resource units.

The table below defines the resource unit limits for an application in a tenant:

License count 0 – 1k 1k – 5k 5k - 15k 15k - 50k 50k+
App 1 minute 1,200 2,400 3,600 4,800 6,000
App daily 1,200,000 2,400,000 3,600,000 4,800,000 6,000,000

Note

We reserve the right to change the resource unit limits.

In terms of API costs, Microsoft Graph APIs have a predetermined resource unit cost per request:

Resource units per request Operations
1
  • Single item query, such as get item
  • Delta with a token
  • 2
  • Multi item query, such as list children, except delta with a token
  • Create, update, delete and upload
  • 5
  • All permission resource operations, including $expand=permissions
  • Note

    We reserve the right to change the API resource unit cost.

    Delta with a token is the most efficient way to scan content in SharePoint, and we talk more in details at the best practices for scanning applications. To help applications that follow the guidance, we lower the resource unit cost of delta requests with a token to 1 resource unit, although it's a multi-item query. The delta request without a token is considered a multi-item query and costs 2 resource units per request.

    In batching, requests in a batch are evaluated individually by resource units.

    CSOM and REST don't have a predetermined resource unit cost and they usually consume more resource units than Microsoft Graph APIs to achieve the same functionality. And in addition to resource unit limits, CSOM and REST are also subject to other internal resource limits, so if applications call CSOM and REST, they may experience more throttling than the limits described in this document. We highly recommend you choose Microsoft Graph APIs over CSOM and REST APIs when possible.

    Since application limits are in resource units, the actual request rate, such as requests per minute, depends on application’s API choice and the corresponding API resource unit cost. In general, you can estimate the request rate using an average of 2 resource units per request and divide resource unit limits by 2 to get the estimated request rate.

    Although each application has its own limits within a tenant and we allow tenants to run more than one application, multiple applications running against the same tenant share the same resource bucket, and in rare occurrences can cause rate limiting when too many applications send requests at the time.

    How to handle throttling?

    Below is a quick summary of the best practices to handle throttling:

    • Reduce the number of concurrent requests
    • Avoid request spikes
    • Choose Microsoft Graph APIs over CSOM and REST APIs when possible
    • Use the Retry-After and RateLimit HTTP headers
    • Decorate your traffic so we know who you are (see section on traffic decoration best practice more on that below)

    As stated earlier, Microsoft Graph is cloud born APIs that have the latest improvements and optimizations. In general, Microsoft Graph consumes less resource than CSOM and REST to achieve the same functionality. Hence, adopting Microsoft Graph can improve application's performance and reduce throttling.

    If you do run into throttling, we require using the Retry-After HTTP header to ensure minimum delay until the throttle is removed. The RateLimit HTTP headers send you early signals when you're close to limits and you can proactively reduce requests to avoid hitting the throttle.

    Retry-after header

    When applications experience throttling, SharePoint Online returns a Retry-After HTTP header in the request indicating how long in seconds the calling application should wait before retrying or making a new request.

    Honoring the Retry-After HTTP header is the fastest way to handle being throttled because SharePoint Online dynamically determines the right time to try again.

    Throttled requests count towards usage limits, so failure to honor Retry-After may result in more throttling. In other words, aggressive retries work against calling applications because even though the calls fail, they still count towards usage limits. Honoring the Retry-After HTTP header will ensure the shortest delay and reduce wasting quotas in throttled requests.

    RateLimit headers - preview

    In addition to the Retry-After header in the response of throttled requests, SharePoint Online also returns the IETF RateLimit headers for selected limits in certain conditions to help applications manage rate limiting. We recommend applications to take advantage of these headers to avoid hitting throttle.

    • RateLimit-Limit contains the limit in the current time window.
    • RateLimit-Remaining indicates the remaining quota in the current window.
    • RateLimit-Reset indicates the number of seconds until the quota is refilled.

    Note

    These headers are currently in beta and subject to change. At the time when the headers were adopted, the IETF specification was in draft. The current implementation is based on the draft-03 of the IETF specification. There is the potential for changes when the specification is final, and we will adapt to those changes in the future.

    The RateLimit headers are returned on a best-efforts basis, so applications may not receive the headers under all conditions. Additionally, there are other limits that aren't presented in the RateLimit headers, so applications can get throttled even before reaching the limit described in the RateLimit headers. Below is the list of limits that we support the RateLimit headers for. The policies and values are subject to change:

    limit Condition limit value Description
    App 1 minute resource unit Usage >= 80% of the limit Resource unit When an application consumes 80% or more of its app 1 minute limit, the limit, remaining and reset are returned.

    Below are some examples to help you understand the RateLimit headers:

    • An application has consumed 90% of its resource unit quota (1,080 out of 1,200), and its consumption is within all the limits that apply to it. The request succeeds and the RateLimit headers are returned.
    HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
    RateLimit-Limit: 1200
    RateLimit-Remaining: 120
    RateLimit-Reset: 5
    
    • An application has consumed 100% of its resource unit quota, so it gets throttled due to this policy. The request is throttled and the RateLimit headers are returned. The Retry-After matches the RateLimit-Reset.
    HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
    Retry-After: 31
    RateLimit-Limit: 1200
    RateLimit-Remaining: 0
    RateLimit-Reset: 31
    
    • An application has consumed 90% of its resource unit quota but its consumption has already reached other limits that the RateLimit headers don't support. In this case, the request is throttled and the RateLimit headers aren't returned to avoid confusion although the condition to return the headers is satisfied.
    HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
    Retry-After: 9
    

    Additional information can be found in Prevent throttling in your application by using RateLimit headers in SharePoint Online

    How to decorate your http traffic?

    Well-decorated traffic will be prioritized over traffic that isn't properly decorated.

    What is the definition of undecorated traffic?

    • Traffic is undecorated if there's no AppID/AppTitle and User Agent string in API calls to SharePoint Online. The User Agent string should be in a specific format as described below.
    • If you're developing a web application executing in the browser, most modern browsers don't allow overwriting the User Agent string, and you don't need to implement it.

    What are the recommendations?

    • If you've created an application, the recommendation is to register and use AppID and AppTitle – This will ensure the best overall experience and best path for any future issue resolution. Include also the User Agent string information as defined in following step.

      Note

      Refer to the Microsoft identity documentation, such as the Quickstart: Register an application with the Microsoft identity platform page, for information on creating an Azure AD application.

    • Make sure to include User Agent string in your API call to SharePoint with following naming convention

    Type User Agent Description
    ISV Application ISV|CompanyName|AppName/Version Identify as ISV and include Company Name, App Name separated by a pipe character and then adding Version number separated with a slash character
    Enterprise application NONISV|CompanyName|AppName/Version Identify as NONISV and include Company Name, App Name separated by a pipe character and then adding Version number separated with a slash character
    • If you're building your own JavaScript libraries, which are used to call SharePoint Online APIs, make sure that you include the User Agent information to your http request and potentially register your web application also as an Application, where suitable.

    Note

    Format of the user agent string is expected to follow RFC2616, so please follow up on the above guidance on the right separators. It is also fine to append existing user agent string with the requested information.

    Common throttling scenarios in SharePoint Online

    The most common causes of per-user throttling in SharePoint Online are client-side object model (CSOM) or Representational State Transfer (REST) code that performs too many actions too frequently.

    • Sporadic traffic

      Constant load or repetitive complex queries against SharePoint Online must be optimized for low impact. Failing to follow best practices for scanning applications that process files in bulk will likely result in throttling. These apps include sync engines, backup providers, search indexers, classification engines, data loss prevention tools, and any other tool, which attempts to reason over the entirety of data and apply changes to it.

    • Overwhelming traffic

      A single process dramatically exceeds throttling limits, continually, over a long time period.

      • You used web services to build a tool to synchronize user profile properties. The tool updates user profile properties based on information from your line-of-business (LOB) human resources (HR) system. The tool makes calls at too high a frequency.
      • You're running a load-testing script on SharePoint Online and you get throttled. Load testing isn't allowed on SharePoint Online.
      • You customized your team site on SharePoint Online, for example, by adding a status indicator on the Home page. This status indicator updates frequently, which causes the page to make too many calls to the SharePoint Online service - this triggered throttling.
      • Running the OneDrive Sync client while also running migration applications or applications that crawl sites and write back data can result in high request volumes that may trigger throttling.
    • Unsupported use cases

      Unsupported use of SharePoint Online may experience throttling. Using SharePoint and OneDrive as an intermediary service between Microsoft 365 and another repository is an example of an unsupported use case.

    • Creating multiple AppIDs for the same application

      Don't create separate AppIDs where the applications essentially perform the same operations, such as backup or data loss prevention. Applications running against the same tenant ultimately share the same resource of the tenant. Historically some applications have tried this approach to get around the application throttling but ended up exhausting the tenant’s resource and causing multiple applications to be throttled in the tenant.

    Scenario specific limits

    When using app-only authentication with Sites.Read.All permission

    When you're using SharePoint Online search APIs with app-only authentication and the app having Sites.Read.All permission (or stronger), the app will be registered with full permissions, and is allowed to query all your SharePoint Online content (including user’s private OneDrive for Business content).

    To ensure the service remains fast and reliable, queries using such permission are throttled at 25 requests per second. The search query will return with an http 429 response. When waiting for throttling recovery, you should ensure to pause all search query requests you may be making to the service using similar app-only permission. Making more calls while receiving throttle responses will extend the time it takes for your app to become unthrottled.

    When searching for people search results

    When searching using a result source that requests people results, we may throttle any requests exceeding an organization-wide limit of 25 requests per second. This limit applies to all SharePoint search CSOM and REST requests using either the out-of-the-box "Local People Results" result source or a custom people search result source.

    If you have applications or components, which are causing your people search requests to get throttled, we recommend that you:

    1. Consider if the requests are necessary for your application. For example, if you're using a custom search site, which makes many simultaneous queries, check whether some of those requests can be removed without any significant impact to your organization's search experience. Alternatively, consider trying our modern people search experience in Microsoft Search by searching from the SharePoint start page. People search in Microsoft Search has been optimized for better performance and more relevant results.
    2. Avoid making concurrent requests. For example, instead of issuing 10 requests all at once, issue them consecutively - only issue the next query after the previous one has completed. You may need to consider caching these results if you need them quickly, for example of a page load.
    3. Try consolidating the requests into a single query. For example, instead making 10 simultaneous queries for WorkEmail:user1@constoso.com, WorkEmail:user2@constoso.com,..., WorkEmail:user10@contoso.com, try the single query, WorkEmail:user1@constoso.com WorkEmail:user2@constoso.com ... WorkEmail:user10@contoso.com.
    4. Consider using the Microsoft Graph API if a high-request-volume scenario (in excess of 25 requests per second) is truly necessary.

    What should you do if you get blocked in SharePoint Online?

    Blocking is the most extreme form of throttling. We rarely ever block a tenant, unless we detect long-term, excessive traffic that may threaten the overall health of the SharePoint Online service. We apply blocks to prevent excessive traffic from degrading the performance and reliability of SharePoint Online. A block - which is placed at the app or user level - prevents the offending process from running until you fix the problem. If we block your subscription, you must take action to modify the offending processes before the block can be removed.

    If we block your subscription, we'll notify you of the block in the Office 365 Message Center. The message describes what caused the block, provides guidance on how to resolve the offending issue, and tells you who to contact to get the block removed.

    See also