SharePoint limits and boundaries [Quick Guide]

This is a quick guide to know about, SharePoint limits and boundaries, like SharePoint web application limits, SharePoint site limits, list and libraries limits in SharePoint Online, etc.

Table of Contents

What are SharePoint limits, boundaries, and Thresholds

Now, let us understand what are the limits, boundaries, and thresholds meaning in SharePoint. All these will be applicable to SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, SharePoint 2019, and SharePoint Online.

Boundaries:

SharePoint Boundaries are the static limit by Microsoft, these limits cannot be exceeded.
For example, let us take the 10 GB document size as a boundary then we cannot store documents that are larger than 10 GB.
It cannot be exceeded by design because it is a built-in absolute value provided by Microsoft.

Thresholds:

SharePoint Thresholds are configurable limits that can be exceeded, but if you will increase the limit, it might impact the performance of the server.
For example, in the SharePoint Online list, there is a threshold limit of 5000 to retrieve items. You can increase the list threshold in SharePoint 2019/2016/2013 to retrieve more items, but it might impact the performance.

Supported Limits:

SharePoint supported limits are set by default to a tested value. Microsoft has done some testing with some parameters and based on the results, they have set a configurable limit.
Exceeding supported limits may cause unexpected results, a significant decrease in performance, or other harmful effects. Supported limits and guidelines determined the performance.

Web application limit SharePoint 2019/2016

As much as possible we have to limit the number of SharePoint web applications on your farm. Instead of adding web applications where possible create additional hostname SharePoint site collections.
The maximum value of the web application zone is 5 per web application. There are 5-zones in SharePoint web applications include Default, Internet, Extranet, Custom, and Intranet.
In web applications, each and every managed path that is created can apply. At the farm level, 20 web application per farm applies at the managed path for the host-named site collection.
On the webserver managed paths are cached, against the managed path list CPU resources are used to process the incoming requests. At web application, we apply the managed path for path-based site collections.
If the solution, cache size exceeded 300MB per web application then solutions are retrieved from the disk and this may slow down the response time.

SharePoint Server Limits

SharePoint Hardware capability is determined by the maximum number of web servers on the SharePoint farm.

SharePoint Site Limits

By default, In a central pool SharePoint storage is available from which all sites can draw. Automatically, storage space and reallocate space are handled by the SharePoint sites when they need the storage space and what they need they set it.

How much memory allocated to the web servers.
The farm is serving the workload are usage characteristics and user base and the SharePoint server limit is up to 10 GB or more can be utilized by the application pool.

SharePoint Online Site Limits

SharePoint Online site limits per organization are 2 million for Microsoft Business Basic or Business Premium and not including the OneDrive created for each licensed user.
Microsoft 365 Business Basic or Business Premium and Office 365 Enterprise E1, E2, and E5 purchased 1 TB plus 10 GB per license. If you want the extra amount of file storage then you can add on Microsoft 365 and office 365.
Office 365 Enterprise F3 has 1 TB of total storage per organization. Business Basic or Business Premium and Office 365 Enterprise E1, E2, and E5 and office 365 F3 have 25 TB maximum storage per site(i.e site collection).
Business Basic or Business Premium and Office 365 Enterprise E1, E2, and E5 and office 365 F3 have 2 million sites per organization.
Business Basic or Business Premium has up to 300 users whereas Office 365 Enterprise E1, E2, and E5 and Office 365 F3 have 1-500,000 users. You can also contact the Microsoft team if you have more than 500,000 users.

SharePoint 2019/2016 Site Limits

The maximum number of site collections per farm is 500,000 personal sites plus 250,000 all other site templates.
SharePoint sites can all reside on web applications or can be distributed across multiple web applications.
On a website, the recommended limit is 2000, and 250,000 is the supported limit for the number of websites in a site collection. Degradation can be there if the number of websites surpasses 2000 in a site collection.
A site collection size can be the maximum size of the content database size limit and the size per content database is 200 GB in a general usage scenario.
The maximum number of content databases per farm is 500. In all usage scenarios, the per content database size is 4 TB.

SharePoint 2013 Site Limits

The maximum value per farm is 750,000 in which (500,000 rooted with the Personal sites template and 250,000 rooted with other types).
A Site collection size can be the maximum size of the SharePoint content database. The maximum number of device channels per publishing site collection is 10 and the limit type is Boundary.

SharePoint list and library limits

SharePoint uses lists to store contents. Lists are like a table in SQL server or excel that contains rows and columns. Rows will be the contents or data and Columns are the metadata in SharePoint.

In SharePoint, to store documents, we create a library and in a SharePoint document library, rows are documents and columns are metadata.

SharePoint Online list and library limits

SharePoint list can have up to 30 million items.
At a time, you can retrieve 5,000 items from a SharePoint list, but the limit can be increased to 50,000.
SharePoint library can have 30 million files and folders.
You cannot break permission inheritance on the list, library, and folder when it contains more than 100,000 items.
In a SharePoint site, you can create as many as list and document libraries, there is no limit as such.
The files attached to the list items have a maximum size of 15 GB.

List and library limits in SharePoint 2019/2016

In a SharePoint content database, each list and library item can only occupy 8,000 bytes in total, 7700 bytes for end-user columns.
The default size is 2 GB and the maximum value of file size is 10 GB, In SharePoint Server 2019, the file limit is 15 GB.
Concurrent editors per document are 10 for .docx,.pptx, and .ppsx files.
If the number of sites surpasses 2,000 then the interface for enumerating subsites of a given website does not perform well. As the number of subsites grows then the all Tree View control performance and site content page will decrease.
List view threshold specifies the number of list or library items in a database operation i.e greater than 5000. At the time of adding or removing the column index, the threshold is 20,000.
The threshold is 10,000 when deleting a list or folder in a list view threshold.
For SharePoint administrators, the list view threshold specifies a maximum of 20,000 lists or libraries in a database such as a query can process when they are performed with appropriate permissions by the auditors and admins. But we can also, override by using the SharePoint server object model and PowerShell.
The list view lookup threshold describes the maximum joins per query which is based on lookup, person/group, and workflow status columns. The operation is blocked in case more than eight joins were used by query and this is not applied on single item operation. It returns to the first 12 lookups.

SharePoint 2013 list and library limits

In a database, each list and library item can only occupy 8,000 bytes in total. 7700 bytes for end-user columns.
The maximum default file size is 250 MB. File size can be increased up to 2 GB(2,047 MB).
By using nesting folders you can create very large document libraries and this depends on how documents and folders are organized. The maximum value of documents is 30,000,000 per library.
The maximum value of the major version is 400,000. The basic file operation such as open or save, delete and view the version history may not succeed if the limit is exceeded.
In items, the maximum value is 30,000,000 per list.
The value for bulk operations that allows the user interface is 100.
The number of security scoop sets for a list cannot exceed 50,000.
The concurrent document per editor is 10 and the limit of Coauthoring in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for .docx, .pptx, .ppsx, and .xlsx files.
The list view threshold is 5000 that specifies the list or library items.
The list view lookup threshold default value is increased from 8 to 12 and if the query uses more than eight joins the operation is blocked.
If the number of sites surpasses 2,000 then the interface for enumerating subsites of a given website does not perform well. As the number of subsites grows then the all Tree View control performance and site content page will decrease.
For auditors and administrators, the list view threshold specifies 20,000 lists or libraries in a database such as a query can process when they are performed with appropriate permissions by the auditors and admins. It works with Allow Object Model override and it is to be enabled by using the Custom code to set the SPQueryThrottleoption.

SharePoint list column limits

In SharePoint Column limits each column type has a value that is listed in bytes. 8,000 bytes is the sum of all the columns in the SharePoint list.

Data Type	Maximum Columns
Single line of text	255
Multiple lines of text	350
Choice	255
Choice(Multiple Selection)	350
Number	550
Currency	550
Date and Time	550
Lookup	750
Yes/No	1000
Person or Group	750
Hyperlink or Picture	127
Calculated	255
GUID	350
Int	750
Managed metadata	190
Geolocation	2

SharePoint list column limits

SharePoint Hub Site limits

SharePoint Hub site based on organizational attributes such as project, department, region, or division and meet the needs of your organization to connect them together.
A SharePoint administrator can only create a SharePoint hub site.
A hub site owner can customize the navigation bar and can use the mega menu layout in Shared hub navigation.
Only on modern pages hub site settings will appear.
The maximum limit to create a hub site for an organization is up to 2000.
In your organization, you can set up SharePoint multi geo-location where the workload is available.
To make programmatic changes to the hub site navigation, you can use the REST API, CSOM, or PnP PowerShell. All associated sites are based on the top navigation bar.

In this SharePoint quick guide, we discussed on various SharePoint limits and boundaries like:

What are SharePoint limits, boundaries, and Thresholds
Web application limit SharePoint 2019/2016
SharePoint Server Limits
SharePoint Site Limits
SharePoint Online Site Limits
SharePoint 2019/2016 Site Limits
SharePoint 2013 Site Limits
SharePoint list and library limits
SharePoint Online list and library limits
List and library limits in SharePoint 2019/2016
SharePoint 2013 list and library limits
SharePoint list column limits
SharePoint Hub Site limits