Microsoft Graph · Rate Limits

Microsoft Graph Rate Limits

Microsoft Graph applies per-service throttling on top of a global per-app ceiling of 130,000 requests per 10 seconds. Each service (mail, calendar, files, identity, Teams, Excel, education, reports) has its own per-app-per-tenant and per-app-across-all-tenants quotas. Identity & directory uses a ResourceUnit token-bucket model with size-tiered quotas (Small / Medium / Large tenant). Returns 429 with Retry-After.

Microsoft Graph Rate Limits is the rate-limit profile for Microsoft Graph on the APIs.io network — every limit transcribed verbatim from the provider’s own documentation on 2026-11-04.

It captures 18 rate-limit definitions, including Global ceiling per application across all tenants — 130,000 requests per 10 seconds.

Limit state is signalled in the retryAfter, requestId, throttleScope, and throttleLimit response headers, and an exhausted limit returns HTTP 429.

The profile also includes 6 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled and serviceUnavailable.

Tagged areas include Rate Limiting, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft 365, Identity, and Microsoft.

18 Limits Exhausted: HTTP 429 retryAfterrequestIdthrottleScopethrottleLimit
Transcribed from the provider's documentation on 2026-11-04 — raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoftgraph/microsoft-graph-....
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Rate LimitingMicrosoft GraphMicrosoft 365IdentityMicrosoft

Limits

Global ceiling per application across all tenants application
130,000 requests per 10 seconds
requests_per_10_seconds · second
130000
Identity & Access (read) — small tenant (<50 users) app/tenant
resource_units_per_10_seconds · second
3500/10 seconds
Identity & Access (read) — medium tenant (50–500 users) app/tenant
resource_units_per_10_seconds · second
5000/10 seconds
Identity & Access (read) — large tenant (>500 users) app/tenant
resource_units_per_10_seconds · second
8000/10 seconds
Identity & Access (write) per app/tenant app/tenant
requests_per_2m30s · second
3000/2 minutes 30 seconds
Identity & Access (read) per app across tenants application
resource_units_per_20_seconds · second
150000/20 seconds
Identity & Access (write) per app across tenants application
requests_per_5_minutes · minute
35000
Excel workbook — any request per app/tenant app/tenant
requests_per_10_seconds · second
1500/10 seconds
Excel workbook — any request per app across tenants application
requests_per_10_seconds · second
5000/10 seconds
Teams Calls per app/tenant app/tenant
requests_per_15_seconds · second
50000
Teams Presence per app/tenant app/tenant
requests_per_30_seconds · second
10000
Teams Call Records per app/tenant app/tenant
requests_per_20_seconds · second
1500/20 seconds
Teams Call Records per application across tenants application
requests_per_20_seconds · second
15000/20 seconds
Identity & Access Reports — any request per app/tenant app/tenant
requests_per_10_seconds · second
5/10 seconds
Education service per app/tenant app/tenant
requests_per_10_seconds · second
35000/10 seconds
Exchange Message Trace tenant
requests_per_5_minutes · minute
100
Outlook (mail / calendar / contacts) app/mailbox
varies
per-mailbox throttling — see Outlook docs; fall back to Retry-After
Files (OneDrive / SharePoint) app/tenant
varies
see SharePoint Online throttling guidance

Policies

ResourceUnit cost model
Identity / directory requests are charged base ResourceUnits (most are 1 RU; some paths cost 2–5 RU). Plan capacity in ResourceUnits, not raw requests.
Backoff Strategy
Honour Retry-After on 429 / 503; the SDK handlers do this by default.
Use change tracking
Prefer delta queries and change notifications (subscriptions) over polling.
Use $batch
Combine up to 20 requests in a single $batch envelope; each is throttled individually.
Microsoft Graph Data Connect for bulk
For tenant-wide bulk extraction, use Data Connect to bypass REST throttling.
Request priority
Set x-ms-throttle-priority (high / normal / low) to influence which traffic is shed first under contention.

Sources

Work with this as data

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

MCP server

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https://apis.io/mcp

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-graph-rate-limits"
All rate limits 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/rate-limits?limit=25"

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