Limits can be annoying. Who am I to tell you how many Justin Bieber videos you can stream in a week or how many croissants you can eat today?

However, to maintain optimum performance for all our customers, salesforce.com balances transaction loads by imposing limits, such as the total API requests per 24-hour period for an organization. We realize that this creates another condition that you must handle in your code when you use the Force.com APIs. So, we’re working on making our Force.com Platform limits more flexible to support spikes in API requests.

flexible limits

If the new Flexible API Limits feature is enabled and your organization exceeds its API request limits, requests will continue to be processed if our service has capacity to handle them.

Note: This feature is available through a pilot program in the Winter ’14 release. For information on enabling it for your organization, contact salesforce.com.

Flexible limits allow your organization to exceed its API request limit up to 50 percent above your normal limits within the
limit timeframe (typically 24 hours). For example, if your daily limit for API requests is 100,000, it’s extended to 150,000.
The following day, if your organization activity spikes again, the limit will be extended to 150,000 requests again.

Which Limits are Covered?

Flexible limits apply to the number of API requests per 24-hour period for these APIs:

  • SOAP API
  • REST API
  • Bulk API ( batch limit: batches per rolling 24-hour period)
  • Streaming API (number of events per rolling 24-hour period)

How Can I Tell When Limits are Exceeded?

You can check your API usage in Salesforce. From Setup:

  • Click System Overview to see API requests in the last 24 hours.
  • Click API Usage Notifications to set up an email notification whenever your organization exceeds a specified limit for the number of API requests made in a specified span of hours.
  • Click Jobs > Bulk Data Load Jobs to see the number of Bulk API batches processed in the last 24 hours.
  • Click Company Profile > Company Information to see Streaming API events in the last 24 hours.

Some additional features have been added in the Winter ’14 release to help you proactively manage limits in your code:

  • LimitInfoHeader for SOAP API—Use this header to monitor your API limits as you make SOAP API requests.
  • Limit Info Header for REST API—Use this header to monitor your API limits as you make REST API requests.
  • Limits Resource—Pilot—Use this REST resource to check your current usage versus API limits.

We hope that the new Flexible API Limits feature makes it easier for you to handle growth in usage of your apps.

Related Resources

Get the latest Salesforce Developer blog posts and podcast episodes via Slack or RSS.

Add to Slack Subscribe to RSS