Use this reference to understand Site Search subscription limits and technical limits for API requests, payloads, Sandbox Apps, authentication tokens, and feature-specific settings.
Subscription Usage Limits
Your Site Search subscription determines limits such as monthly search requests, indexed items, and the number of Apps available to your account. Use the Subscription page in SearchStax to monitor your current usage.
- Search requests: If you're approaching your monthly request limit, review where your implementation is generating search requests and investigate any unexpected usage. What happens when you reach the limit can vary by subscription.
- Indexed items: When you reach your indexed-item limit, you can't index additional documents.
- Apps: When you reach your App limit, you can't create additional Apps.
SearchStax sends usage notifications at 60%, 80%, and 100% of your monthly search request limit. Use these alerts to review your usage and investigate unexpected increases.
For details about how search requests are counted, common causes of unexpectedly high usage, and how to troubleshoot request usage, see Understanding Search Request Consumption.
Limits by Category
App-Level Request and Size Limits
| Limit | Maximum | Error Response |
|---|---|---|
| API requests per second | 20+ | 429 Error |
| Document size | 100 KB | Payload validation failure |
| Payload | 10 MB | 413 Error |
| Request size (query size) | 10 KB | 414 Error |
| URL length | 10,240 characters | 414 Error |
Sandbox App Limits (Sandbox-Enabled Accounts)
If your account supports Sandbox Apps, limits and usage are tracked by environment. See Production and Sandbox Apps for model details and UI behavior.
- Sandbox App capacity: 3 Sandbox Apps per Production App by default.
- Sandbox App add-ons: Additional capacity is available in account-level packs of 10.
- Monthly requests: 10,000 requests per Sandbox App.
- Rate limit: 5 requests per second per Sandbox App.
- Content items: Same as the Production App cap, up to 1M items, whichever is lower.
- Analytics retention: 30 days.
Service terms: Sandbox Apps don't include SLA or uptime commitments. Keep service terms separate from usage-limit planning when evaluating production readiness.
Security and Token Limits (Per App)
| Limit | Max Authentication Tokens and Keys |
|---|---|
| Search API | 10 |
| Discovery API | 10 |
| Analytics Tracking | 1 |
| Analytics Reporting | 1 |
| Profiles per App | 10 |
Other Technical Limits
| Feature | Limit |
|---|---|
| Custom Reports Conditions | 3 |
| Number of Facet Values | 50 |
| Number of Data Filters – Inclusions and Exclusion per Model | 20 |
| Number of Promoted Indexed Items per Promotion | 10 |
| Number of External Items | 100 |
| Max Upload File Size (Synonyms, Spellcheck, Auto-suggest, Related Searches) | 10MB |
Account-Level Administration Limits
Note: The App creation limit is 10 app creations per hour per account. If the account exceeds this limit, the app creation API returns 429 Too Many Requests.
HTTP Status Codes and Error Handling (Limit Context)
| HTTP Code | When It Happens | Typical Response Body | What to Do |
|---|---|---|---|
429
|
Request-rate limit is exceeded | Too-many-requests response | Retry with backoff and verify rate limits |
413
|
Payload exceeds limit | Content-length limit response | Reduce payload size |
414
|
Query, request line, or URL exceeds size limits | URI or request-too-large response | Reduce query or URL size |
500
|
Possible service-side impact during overage scenarios | Internal service error response | Verify subscription state and contact support if the issue persists |
For detailed troubleshooting, see 429 Error.
Pagination
Not applicable for this limits reference article.
Related Resources
Shared API Foundations
Use these shared references for authentication, request and response structure, and pagination behavior used across Site Search APIs: