Jira Limits 2026: Every Cloud Limit in One Table

The admin adds one more custom field to the support space, and Jira refuses. The space already has 700. Since March 2026 that is a hard limit, and it is one of about forty numbers that now shape a Jira Cloud site, spread across five Atlassian pages that each cover one corner.

This is all of them on one page, read from those pages on 13 November 2026, with the date each limit started and what Jira does when you reach it.

Limits and guardrails are different things

Atlassian’s data limits and guardrails page draws the line. A limit is “a software-enforced maximum”: Jira refuses to add more. A guardrail is “a recommended threshold”; exceeding it “won’t automatically block an action, but it may increase configuration complexity or affect performance”. Neither can be raised by an admin: “they can’t change the limit values in Jira settings.”

Per space: fields, work types and configuration

The custom field limit is the one people search for, and it is narrower than it sounds:

• It counts “fields included in field configuration schemes associated with the space”, so a field shared by five spaces counts once in each.
• “Trashed fields don’t count toward the 700-field limit.”
• “There is no limit on the total number of custom fields that can exist across the site.”

The September 2026 limits are “a progressive rollout, the exact date on which enforcement becomes active for an individual entity or site may vary”. Archived releases are not meant to count, and the component limit applies to Jira components, not Compass ones.

Per site: guardrails, not limits

Atlassian adds that performance at scale also depends on JQL complexity, boards, custom-field usage, traffic, automation, apps and integrations. On plan size, the pricing page gives the Free plan “up to 10 users with 2GB of storage” and lists up to 100,000 users per site.

Per work item

From the knowledge base article work item field limits, which says they apply to every work item type and are not configurable:

Rich-text fields (description, comments, worklogs) already had a 1 MB cap per entry, which stays. The caps apply to the REST API, automation rules and transitions too: “An error response will occur if the limit is exceeded.” The 2,000-link cap is the one integrations hit first, for example a sync tool that links every commit.

Attachments and storage

Automation

Two sets of numbers. The service limits protect a site from one runaway rule (automation service limits; Atlassian now calls rules “flows”):

The usage allowance is how much automation a plan includes. Atlassian’s usage page says “Usage-based billing starts December 3, 2026”, and usage is now counted in steps: “Every trigger, condition, action, branch, and loop that runs in a flow counts as a step toward your usage.”

Allowances are pooled across the organization and refresh monthly. Some runs cost nothing: aborted or throttled runs, and from 5 November 2026 runs that end with no action performed. A loop or a branch counts once, however many items it goes through.

Steps are counted for automation flows. A Marketplace app that does the same job with its own code is not a flow, so it uses none of them. One example of ours: a “remind me of overdue work” rule runs every day and spends steps each time, while Deadline Tracker sends its daily reminder e-mail from the app itself, a scheduled function that calls Jira’s notify API. Its calls count against the app’s own API quota, not your automation allowance.

REST API for apps

Since 2 March 2026, Forge, Connect and OAuth 2.0 apps run on a points-based quota (rate limiting). Each call costs points by the work it does; by default an app “shares a single 65,000 point hourly quota across all tenants”, reset at the top of each UTC hour, with a per-second burst limit on top. Apps with heavy use can move to a per-tenant pool (for Standard sites, 100,000 points plus 10 per user an hour). Over the limit, Jira answers HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header.

Search and export

The export numbers, and how to split a bigger export with JQL, are in Jira export to Excel; the unbounded-query error and other search traps in the JQL cheat sheet.

What happens at a limit

From Atlassian’s page, in short:

• Jira checks the admin action when it is submitted and rejects one that would add more.
• A bulk action that would cross the limit is rejected whole, not applied in part.
• Existing configuration keeps working; nothing is deleted, archived or disabled.
• Users still create and update work items; unrelated admin changes still work.
• A message in Jira says which limit was reached.

On Premium and Enterprise, the site optimizer finds unused fields and schemes. On Standard, Atlassian points to the usage shown in Jira settings, the REST API and scripts. Moving from Server or Data Center, a space at 90 % or more of a limit gets a three-month exemption after migration.

Sources

All read on 13 November 2026:

• Data limits and guardrails in Jira Cloud
• Work item field limits in Jira Cloud
• Configure file attachments
• Automation service limits
• How is your automation usage calculated
• Rate limiting, Jira Cloud platform
• Export over 10,000 work items in Jira Cloud
• Jira pricing