Microsoft Entra · Rate Limits

Microsoft Entra Rate Limits

Microsoft Entra (Azure AD) administration is performed primarily through Microsoft Graph. Throttling for the directory/identity service uses a ResourceUnit token-bucket model scoped per (application, tenant) pair, with separate write quotas. Limits scale with tenant size (Small <50 users, Medium 50-500, Large >500). Returns 429 Too Many Requests with a Retry-After header.

Microsoft Entra Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Microsoft Entra on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.

It captures 9 rate-limit definitions, measuring resource_units_per_10_seconds, requests_per_2m30s, resource_units_per_20_seconds, requests_per_5_minutes, and requests_per_10_seconds.

The profile also includes 4 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled and serviceUnavailable.

Tagged areas include Rate Limiting, Identity, Access Management, Microsoft Graph, and Microsoft.

9 Limits Throttle: 429
Rate LimitingIdentityAccess ManagementMicrosoft GraphMicrosoft

Limits

Read ResourceUnits — small tenant (<50 users) per app app/tenant
resource_units_per_10_seconds · second
3500
10-second sliding window
Read ResourceUnits — medium tenant (50–500 users) per app app/tenant
resource_units_per_10_seconds · second
5000
10-second sliding window
Read ResourceUnits — large tenant (>500 users) per app app/tenant
resource_units_per_10_seconds · second
8000
10-second sliding window
Write requests per app/tenant app/tenant
requests_per_2m30s · second
3000
2-minute 30-second window
Read ResourceUnits per application across all tenants application
resource_units_per_20_seconds · second
150000
Write requests per application across all tenants application
requests_per_5_minutes · minute
35000
Write requests per tenant across all apps tenant
requests_per_5_minutes · minute
18000
Identity & Access Reports — any request app/tenant
requests_per_10_seconds · second
5
signInActivity GET app/tenant
requests_per_minute · minute
10

Policies

ResourceUnit cost model
Each Graph request to Entra is charged a base ResourceUnit cost (most are 1 RU; some paths cost 2–5 RU, e.g. group transitiveMembers = 5 RU). Plan capacity in ResourceUnits, not raw requests.
Backoff Strategy
Honour the Retry-After header on 429; otherwise apply exponential backoff with jitter.
Tenant-size scaling
Read budget grows with tenant user count (3500 / 5000 / 8000 RU per 10s for Small / Medium / Large).
Use change-tracking
Prefer delta queries and change notifications over polling for directory objects.

Sources

Work with this as data

Every rate limit here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

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Tools for rate limits

4 MCP tools reach this
  • find_rate_limitsBrowse and filter every rate limit in the catalog.
  • apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
  • resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
  • find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.
All 92 tools →

Call it yourself

curl for this page
This rate limit 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/rate-limits/microsoft-entra-rate-limits"
All rate limits 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/rate-limits?limit=25"

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