specification: API Commons Rate Limits
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/RateLimits
provider: Microsoft Bicep
providerId: microsoft-bicep
created: '2026-05-04'
# Provenance stamped 2026-08-11: this artifact was written by the API Evangelist
# bulk sweep dated 2026-05-04, not harvested from the provider. See roadmap#35.
method: generated
modified: '2026-05-05'
reconciled: true
tags:
  - ARM Templates
  - Azure
  - Cloud
  - Deployment
  - DevOps
  - Infrastructure as Code
  - Rate Limiting
description: Bicep is a client-side compiler / language; it has no SaaS API surface of its
  own. Local CLI operations (bicep build, bicep decompile, bicep publish) have no rate limits
  beyond local-machine resources. When Bicep deployments execute against Azure, all rate
  limiting comes from Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and the target resource providers.
  Throttling responses, headers, and policies match the upstream ARM behavior.
sources:
  - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/bicep/overview
  - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/management/request-limits-and-throttling
headers:
  retryAfter: Retry-After
  remainingSubscriptionReads: x-ms-ratelimit-remaining-subscription-reads
  remainingSubscriptionWrites: x-ms-ratelimit-remaining-subscription-writes
  remainingSubscriptionDeletes: x-ms-ratelimit-remaining-subscription-deletes
  remainingResource: x-ms-ratelimit-remaining-resource
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  serviceUnavailable: 503
limits:
  - name: Bicep CLI local operations
    scope: local-machine
    metric: invocations_per_second
    limit: -1
    notes: No rate limit; bound only by local CPU and memory.
  - name: ARM subscription writes (deployment plane)
    scope: subscription/region/serviceprincipal
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 10
    timeFrame: second
    notes: Deployments are write operations against ARM. Bucket size 200 tokens, refill 10/sec.
  - name: ARM subscription reads (validation / what-if)
    scope: subscription/region/serviceprincipal
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 25
    timeFrame: second
    notes: Bucket size 250, refill 25/sec.
  - name: ARM template deployment depth
    scope: subscription
    metric: nested_deployments
    limit: 800
    notes: Maximum 800 nested deployments per top-level deployment; 5-level nesting limit.
  - name: ARM template size
    scope: deployment
    metric: bytes_compiled
    limit: 4194304
    notes: Compiled JSON template ≤ 4 MB; max 256 parameters / 256 variables / 800 resources
      per template.
  - name: Resource-provider-specific limits
    scope: varies
    metric: varies
    limit: see vendor docs per provider (Microsoft.Compute, Microsoft.Network, Microsoft.Storage,
      etc.)
    notes: Each downstream resource provider applies its own throttling token buckets.
policies:
  - name: ARM token-bucket retry
    description: Honor Retry-After on 429 responses. Azure SDKs implement exponential backoff
      automatically; Bicep CLI uses the SDK underneath.
  - name: Idempotent deployments
    description: Bicep deployments are idempotent — re-running with the same parameters yields
      the same state. Combine with what-if to preview changes without mutating state.
  - name: Modules to reduce single-deployment fan-out
    description: Break large templates into modules with serial / parallel scope to avoid
      hitting the per-deployment 800-resource cap.
  - name: Deployment scopes
    description: Bicep supports tenant, management group, subscription, and resource group
      deployment scopes. Subscription-scope deployments share the subscription-level token
      buckets.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com
    url: https://github.com/Azure/bicep