Social media API rate limits: a reference table for every platform
The actual rate-limit numbers — request-count throttles, daily quotas, and points budgets — for Facebook, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram, and Google Business Profile, sourced and confidence-flagged.
By André LugEach platform runs one of three systems: a request-count throttle (X: 100 posts per 15 minutes per user), a points or quota budget (YouTube: 10,000 units per day), or a posting-frequency ceiling (Threads: 250 posts per 24 hours per profile). LinkedIn and Telegram publish no exact numbers at all — every figure here was checked against current developer documentation on August 26, 2026.
"Rate limit" gets used loosely, but every platform in this table actually runs one of three distinct systems: a classic request-count throttle per time window, a points/quota budget that different operations draw down at different rates, or a separate posting-frequency ceiling that no amount of backoff resolves early. The table below states which kind applies, the actual published (or best-available) numbers, and where each figure comes from — checked against current developer documentation and PostGate's own already-published platform pages on August 26, 2026.
Some platforms — LinkedIn and Telegram in particular — simply don't publish exact numbers. Where that's the case, the table says so instead of inventing a figure that sounds authoritative but isn't.
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Rate limit reference table
| Platform | Type | The numbers | Source & confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook Pages | App- and Page-scoped call budgets | App-level: ~200 calls × active users/hour. Page-level: ~4,800 calls × engaged users/24h. Reels specifically: 30 API-published Reels per Page/24h (separate spam cap). | Confirmed — Meta's Platform Rate Limiting docs. Usage reported via X-App-Usage and X-Page-Usage headers, not a hard remaining count. |
| Graph API call throttle + separate daily publishing cap | General throttle shares Facebook's app/user/Page-scoped budgets above. Content Publishing daily cap: reported inconsistently as 25 posts/24h in older sources vs. 100 in Meta's current docs. | Confirmed for the general throttle. The publishing-cap figure is genuinely unresolved — query GET /{ig-user-id}/content_publishing_limit for the account's real current quota rather than trusting either number. | |
| Threads | Rolling 24-hour posting quota (not a request-per-second throttle) | 250 published posts per 24h per profile · 1,000 replies per 24h per profile, tracked independently. A carousel counts once. | Confirmed — Meta's documented Threads publishing quota. It's a sliding window from each publish attempt, not a fixed midnight reset. |
| Daily app + member call budgets | Application-level and member-level daily counters, both resetting at midnight UTC. No published per-second or per-minute figure for the Posts API. | Unconfirmed as public numbers — LinkedIn does not publish standard throttle figures in its docs. Actual limit and usage are visible only in that app's own Developer Portal Analytics tab. | |
| TikTok | Per-request throttle + per-creator daily posting ceiling + app-level connection cap | No published fixed number for the request throttle itself. Per-creator Direct Post ceiling: reportedly around 15 posts/day (can vary by creator). Pre-audit app-level active-user connection cap: up to 5 distinct users per rolling 24h. | The connection cap is confirmed per TikTok's Content Sharing Guidelines. The 15-posts/day figure is TikTok's own general guidance, not a hard documented constant — treat it as approximate. |
| YouTube | Points quota, not a rate limit | 10,000 units/day shared pool (most endpoints) + a separate, fixed 100 calls/day each for videos.insert and search.list. Resets at midnight Pacific Time. | Confirmed — Google's quota-cost documentation. The upload and search allowances are tracked independently of the shared pool, not carved out of it. |
| Per-category + global call budgets, tiered by access level | Trial: org_write (Pin creation) 300/day per app · global 1,000/day per app. Standard: org_write 100/min per user per app · global 100/sec per user per app. | Confirmed — Pinterest's published rate-limit reference, which Pinterest itself notes is subject to change without notice. Headers: x-ratelimit-limit, -remaining, -reset. | |
| X (Twitter) | Per-window request throttle + separate monthly billing cap | POST /2/tweets: 100 requests/15 min per user, 10,000/24h per app. Separate pay-per-use billing cap: 3 million post reads per monthly billing cycle before an Enterprise plan is required. | Confirmed — docs.x.com/x-api/fundamentals/rate-limits and docs.x.com/x-api/getting-started/pricing, checked August 25, 2026. The two systems are independent; only the billing cap costs money to raise. |
| Bluesky | Points-based per-account budget + per-IP HTTP cap | 5,000 points/hour and 35,000 points/day per account; creating a post costs 3 points (a theoretical ceiling around 1,666 posts/hour). HTTP API requests: 3,000 per 5 minutes per IP. | Confirmed against Bluesky's official rate-limits documentation (docs.bsky.app). Bluesky describes these as generous defaults and asks integrators to reach out if they hit them in normal use. |
| Mastodon | Fixed per-endpoint window (software default, instance-configurable) | 300 requests per 5 minutes across all endpoints (software default) · POST /api/v1/media specifically: 30 per 30 minutes. | Confirmed as the Mastodon software default (docs.joinmastodon.org) and the value mastodon.social uses — every instance operator can change it. Check that instance's own docs before assuming this figure. |
| Telegram | Per-chat, per-group, and global send throttles | Roughly 1 message/second to any single chat · about 20/minute in one group · roughly 30/second across all chats combined for bulk sends. Every method counts, not only sendMessage. | Unconfirmed as official numbers — Telegram does not publish exact rate-limit figures in its Bot API reference. These are consistently reported, community-observed approximations; treat them as safe guidance, not a documented contract. |
| Google Business Profile | Per-project queries-per-minute quota + a hard per-location edit cap | Default 300 QPM per project for most Business Profile APIs (approved-project default) · userRateLimitExceeded default 2,400 QPM per user per project · Business Information API: 10 edits per minute per Business Profile, and this specific ceiling cannot be increased. | Confirmed — developers.google.com/my-business/content/limits. The 10-edits-per-minute figure is a hard, non-negotiable cap distinct from the general QPM quota. |
Does every platform publish its numbers?
LinkedIn and Telegram are the clearest examples: LinkedIn tracks daily app and member budgets but only exposes the actual figures inside your own app's Developer Portal, and Telegram has never published exact throttle numbers at all — every value circulating for it is a community-derived approximation from observed 429 behavior. Treat a documented number and a widely-quoted one as different levels of confidence, and prefer reading the response headers a platform actually sends (where it sends any) over hardcoding either kind as a constant in your integration.
How does PostGate handle the differences for you?
PostGate normalizes every one of these systems — request throttles, points budgets, and posting quotas alike — behind one structured signal: error.code of rate_limited (or platform_transient) with retryable: true on the affected target. See handling a 429 rate limit from a social API for how to read that signal correctly, and exponential backoff for social API retries for the retry schedule that should follow it.
Frequently asked questions
How many posts per day does the Instagram API allow?
The figure is genuinely unresolved in public sources: older ones report 25 posts per 24 hours, while Meta's current docs say 100. Rather than trusting either number, query GET /{ig-user-id}/content_publishing_limit for the account's real current quota — the general call throttle is separate, sharing Facebook's app-, user-, and Page-scoped budgets.
What are Telegram's bot API rate limits?
Telegram has never published exact throttle numbers in its Bot API reference. The consistently reported, community-observed approximations are roughly 1 message per second to any single chat, about 20 per minute in one group, and roughly 30 per second across all chats combined for bulk sends — with every method counting, not only sendMessage. Treat these as safe guidance, not a documented contract.
What is the X (Twitter) API posting rate limit?
POST /2/tweets is limited to 100 requests per 15 minutes per user and 10,000 per 24 hours per app, per docs.x.com as checked August 25, 2026. A separate pay-per-use billing cap allows 3 million post reads per monthly billing cycle before an Enterprise plan is required — the two systems are independent, and only the billing cap costs money to raise.
Does YouTube have an API rate limit?
YouTube runs a points quota, not a rate limit: a 10,000-units-per-day shared pool for most endpoints, plus a separate, fixed 100 calls per day each for videos.insert and search.list, resetting at midnight Pacific Time. The upload and search allowances are tracked independently of the shared pool, not carved out of it.
How many posts per day can a creator publish on TikTok via API?
TikTok publishes no fixed number for the request throttle itself. The per-creator Direct Post ceiling is reportedly around 15 posts per day — TikTok's own general guidance, not a hard documented constant, and it can vary by creator. What is confirmed, per TikTok's Content Sharing Guidelines, is the pre-audit app-level cap: up to 5 distinct users posting per rolling 24 hours.
