Rate limits and throttling in Zapier

Zapier throttling

If you’re on the Free plan or on a trial, your Zap can error saying it has been throttled if too many actions go through in a short time span. The limit is approximately 200 actions every ten minutes per Zap. This limit does not apply to paid accounts.

Note

There is a limit of 105000 records to check for new data. If your trigger contains more than this number, the Zap trigger may error.

Throttling from third-party services

Many third-party apps and services have their own API limits and throttling mechanisms. To distinguish between third-party errors and Zapier throttling errors, look for "Zapier" in the error message.

Flood protection and held items

If you have a large number of items (100+) that trigger a Zap at once, Zapier holds them for you and sends you an email requesting your confirmation. This helps to prevent a large number of actions from running by mistake and protects your task limit.

Once you confirm these should be played, you can use the Replay feature to let them continue. These replayed Zap runs are processed at a rate of one per second. For example, 1000 Zap runs will take a little over fifteen minutes to complete.

If you don't want these Zap runs to go through, you can delete them.

To ensure your Zaps aren't stopped by your apps' rate limits, Zapier may also spread out groups of tasks that trigger all at once.

Note

Instant triggers are not subject to flood protection, as each item is sent to the trigger individually. Some exceptions include Google Sheets and Google Calendar "New Event" and "Updated Event" instant triggers, which use both webhook and polling techniques.

Flood protection limit

You can enable a flood protection limit in each Zap to determine how many new events can be sent through your Zap before your tasks are held. To enable:

• Open your Zap in the Zap editor.
• In the right sidebar, click Settings. 
• In the Flood protection section, click the dropdown menu and select a limit number.

Note

• You must be on a Company plan to use this feature.
• The default limit is 100. The maximum limit is 1500.
• You may still experience rate limiting directly from the app even though you adjust the flood protection limit in Zapier.

Webhook throttling

• Each user’s webhooks are subject to a 429 status code rate limit after 10,000 requests in a 5-minute window. This includes subscription webhooks and REST Hooks.
• Each individual webhook will return a 429 status code after 30 requests per second to encourage a smooth delivery of hooks instead of massive bursts. This includes subscription webhooks and REST Hooks.
• Legacy webhook routes without the user ID in the URL will return a 429 status code after 1,000 requests are received in a 5-minute window (per webhook route). This includes subscription webhooks and REST Hooks.
• During heavy periods of sustained webhook activity, Zapier may return a 200 status but still delay the processing of your webhooks by several minutes.
• If you want to ensure delivery of webhooks, retry delivery on anything besides a 200 status code from Zapier and use an industry-standard exponential backoff interval for retries.

Code rate limits

When using Code steps, Zap runs will be held if they exceed the following limits:

Private app rate limits

Private app rate limits are based on the private app owner’s current Zapier plan. When using private apps, Zap runs will be held if they exceed the following limits:

• Free, Starter, and Professional plans: 100 calls every 60 seconds.
• Team, or Company plans: 5000 calls every 60 seconds.

To increase your private app rate limit, you’ll need to reach out to your private app owner. The private app owner is likely the developer who shared access to the private app with you.