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 Purview
providerId: microsoft-purview
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: false
tags:
  - Rate Limiting
  - Compliance
  - Data Governance
  - Microsoft
description: Microsoft Purview APIs sit on the Azure Resource Manager and Microsoft Graph control planes,
  inheriting their throttling models. ARM control-plane requests are subject to subscription-level read
  / write limits (12,000 reads, 1,200 writes per hour per subscription per region); Graph compliance
  endpoints follow Graph throttling. Purview-specific data-plane limits are not separately published
  per-tier — they degrade based on Data Map capacity-unit allocation. Limits are enforced via 429 with
  Retry-After.
sources:
  - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/management/request-limits-and-throttling
  - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling
notes: Purview-specific per-second numbers are not consistently published. Captures documented Azure
  Resource Manager and Microsoft Graph baselines; raise via Azure support for higher caps.
headers:
  retryAfter: Retry-After
  ratelimitRemaining: x-ms-ratelimit-remaining-subscription-reads
  ratelimitRemainingWrites: x-ms-ratelimit-remaining-subscription-writes
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  serviceUnavailable: 503
limits:
  - name: Azure Resource Manager reads (subscription / region)
    scope: account/region
    metric: requests_per_hour
    limit: 12000
    timeFrame: hour
    notes: Default ARM control-plane read budget per subscription per region.
  - name: Azure Resource Manager writes (subscription / region)
    scope: account/region
    metric: requests_per_hour
    limit: 1200
    timeFrame: hour
    notes: Default ARM control-plane write budget per subscription per region.
  - name: Microsoft Graph (Purview compliance endpoints)
    scope: account
    metric: varies
    limit: 'See Microsoft Graph throttling guidance — service- and tenant-specific'
  - name: Purview Data Map / scanning
    scope: account
    metric: varies
    limit: 'Capacity bound by allocated Data Map capacity units; degrades when capacity is exhausted'
policies:
  - name: Honor Retry-After
    description: All 429 responses include Retry-After. Implement exponential backoff with jitter on
      top of the header value.
  - name: Use ARM rate-limit headers
    description: Inspect x-ms-ratelimit-remaining-subscription-reads / -writes to back off proactively
      before hitting the cap.
  - name: Capacity scaling
    description: Increase allocated Data Map capacity units to raise effective Purview data-plane
      throughput.
  - name: Service principal scoping
    description: Use a dedicated service principal per ETL pipeline to isolate throttling impact and
      improve diagnosability.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com