This article describes some important limitations that you might need to know for different SharePoint Online plans in Office 365. For example, it provides information about number of supported users, storage quotas, and file-size limits. This article covers a range of plans: SharePoint Online in Office 365 Small Business and in Office 365 Enterprise, plus standalone plans.
Note In Office 365 plans, software boundaries and limits for SharePoint Online are managed separately from mailbox storage limits. Mailbox storage limits are set up and managed by using Exchange Online. For more information about how Exchange manages mailbox limits, see Mailbox types and storage limits for Recipients.
In this article
SharePoint Online feature availability
Need help determining which SharePoint solution best fits your organization’s needs?
The various Office 365 plans include different SharePoint Online offerings. These include:
- SharePoint Online for Office 365 Small Business
- SharePoint Online for Office 365 Mid-size Business
- SharePoint Online for Office 365 Enterprise, Education, and Government
You can choose the plan that best fits your organization’s needs. Each person who accesses the SharePoint Online service must be assigned to a subscription plan. SharePoint Online can be included in a Microsoft Office 365 plan, or it can be purchased as a standalone plan, such as SharePoint Enterprise Plan 1 or SharePoint Enterprise Plan 2.
To learn more about SharePoint feature availability and the SharePoint Online service in Office 365, see the SharePoint Online Service Descriptions.
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Limits in SharePoint Online in Office 365 plans
In this section:
Limits for SharePoint Online for Office 365 Small Business
SharePoint Online Small Business and SharePoint Online Small Business Premium have common boundaries and limits. The following table describes those limits.
| Feature |
Description |
| Storage per user (contributes to total storage base of tenant) |
500 megabytes (MB) per subscribed user.
|
| Site collection quota limit |
Up to 100 GB per site collection.
SharePoint admins can set storage limits for site collections and sites. The minimum storage allocation per site collection is 24MB.
|
| Site collections (#) per tenant |
1 site collection per tenant. |
| Subsites |
Up to 2,000 subsites per site collection |
| Total available tenant storage |
10 GB + 500 MB per user.
For example, if you have 50 users, the base storage allocation is 35 GB (10 GB + 500 MB * 50 users).
Up to a maximum of 100 GB. Additional storage for Small Business plans is not yet available.
|
| Personal site storage |
7 GB per user, as soon as provisioned.
This amount is counted separately, and does not add to or subtract from the overall storage allocation for a tenant. Personal site storage applies to a user’s SkyDrive Pro library and personal newsfeed. For more information, see Additional information about SkyDrive Pro limits.
|
| Public Website storage default |
5 GB
A SharePoint admin can allocate up to 100GB (the limit for a site collection).
|
| File upload limit |
250 MB per file. |
| Number of users |
1 - 50 users |
| Maximum number of external users invitees |
Up to 500 unique external users per month.
What is an external user?
|
When reviewing the information on the previous table, remember that the base storage limits for Office 365 for Small Business (10 GB + 500 MB per subscribed user) will affect some of these values. For example, although SharePoint Online for Small Business imposes a limit of 100 GB per site collection, your particular tenant might not have enough storage available to contain a site collection of 100 GB.
Important It’s a good idea to monitor the Recycle Bin and empty it regularly. Content in the Recycle Bin is counted against the storage quota for a tenant. For example, if the Recycle Bin on a site contains 5GB of content, that 5GB is subtracted from the available storage.
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Limits for SharePoint Online for Office 365 Midsize Business
The following table shows the software boundaries and limits for the SharePoint Online Midsize Business plan.
| Feature |
Description |
| Storage per user (contributes to total storage base of tenant) |
500 megabytes (MB) per subscribed user. |
| Storage base per tenant |
10 GB + 500 MB per subscribed user.
For example, if you have 250 users, the base storage allocation is 135 GB (10 GB + 500 MB * 250 users).
Up to a maximum of 2 TB. Additional storage for Midsize Business plans is not yet available.
|
| Site collection quota limit |
Up to 100 GB per site collection.
SharePoint admins can set storage limits for site collections and sites. The minimum storage allocation per site collection is 24MB.
|
| Site collections (#) per tenant |
20 site collections (other than personal sites). |
| Subsites |
Up to 2,000 subsites per site collection |
| Personal site storage |
7 GB per user, as soon as provisioned.
Personal site storage applies to a user’s SkyDrive Pro library and personal newsfeed. This amount is counted separately, and does not add to or subtract the overall storage allocation for a tenant. For more information, see Additional information about SkyDrive Pro limits.
|
| Public Website storage default |
5 GB
A SharePoint admin can allocate up to 100GB (the limit for a site collection).
|
| File upload limit |
250 MB per file. |
| Number of users |
1 - 250 users |
| Maximum number of external user invitees |
Up 10,000 unique external users per month.
What is an external user?
|
When reviewing the information on the previous table, remember that the base storage limits for Office 365 for Mid-size Business (10 GB + 500 MB per subscribed user) will affect some of these values. For example, although SharePoint Online for Mid-sized Business imposes a limit of 100 GB per site collection and a limit of 20 site collections, your particular tenant might not have enough storage available to contain 20 site collections of 100 GB each.
Important It’s a good idea to monitor the Recycle Bin and empty it regularly. Content in the Recycle Bin is counted against the storage quota for a tenant. For example, if the Recycle Bin on a site contains 25GB of content, that 25GB is subtracted from the available storage.
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Limits for SharePoint Online for Office 365 Enterprise, Education, and Government
One or more Office 365 subscriptions plans can be included as part of your subscription. This is true for the following plan offerings:
- Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise subscriptions (E1 – E4)
- Microsoft Office 365 Government subscriptions (G1 – G4)
- Microsoft Office 365 Education subscriptions (A2 – A4)
- Microsoft Office 365 Kiosk subscriptions (K1-K2)
- SharePoint Online stand-alone subscription plans (Plan 1 and Plan 2).
These plans have common boundaries and limits. The following table describes those limits.
| Feature |
Office 365 Enterprise plans (including E1 – E4, A2-A4, G1-G4, and SharePoint Online Plan 1 and Plan 2) |
Office 365 Kiosk plans (Enterprise and Government K1 – K2) |
| Storage per user (contributes to total storage base of tenant) |
500 megabytes (MB) per subscribed user. |
Zero (0).
Licensed Kiosk Workers do not add to the tenant storage base.
|
| Additional storage (per GB per month); no minimum purchase |
$0.20 USD/GB/month. |
$0.20 USD/GB/month. |
| Storage base per tenant |
10 GB + 500 MB per subscribed user + additional storage purchased.
For example, if you have 10,000 users, the base storage allocation is approximately 5 Terabytes (10 GB + 500 MB * 10,000 users).
You can purchase additional storage up to a maximum of 25 TB.
|
10 GB + additional storage purchased.
You can purchase additional storage up to a maximum of 25 TB.
|
| Site collection storage limit |
Up to 100 GB per site collection.
SharePoint admins can set storage limits for site collections and sites. The minimum storage allocation per site collection is 24MB.
|
Up to 100 GB per site collection. SharePoint admins can set storage limits for site collections and sites. The minimum storage allocation per site collection is 24MB.
Kiosk workers (plans K1-K2) cannot administer Sharepoint site collections. You will need a license for at least one Enterprise plan user to manage Kiosk site collections.
|
| Site collections (#) per tenant |
3000 site collections (other than personal sites). |
3000 site collections. |
| Subsites |
Up to 2,000 subsites per site collection |
Up to 2,000 subsites per site collection |
| Personal site storage |
7 GB per user, as soon as provisioned.
Personal site storage applies to a user’s SkyDrive Pro library and personal newsfeed. This amount is counted separately, and does not add to or subtract the overall storage allocation for a tenant. For more information, see Additional information about SkyDrive Pro limits.
|
Not available. |
| Public Website storage default |
5 GB
A SharePoint admin can allocate up to 100GB (the limit for a site collection).
|
5 GB
A SharePoint admin can allocate up to 100GB (the limit for a site collection).
Kiosk workers (plans K1-K2) cannot administer Sharepoint site collections. You will need a license for at least one Enterprise plan user to manage Kiosk site collections.
|
| File upload limit |
250 MB per file. |
250 MB per file. |
| Maximum number of users per tenant |
1 – 500,000+
Note If you have more than 500,000 users, please contact the Microsoft represenative to discuss detailed requirements.
|
1 – 500,000+
Note If you have more than 500,000 users, please contact the Microsoft represenative to discuss detailed requirements.
|
| Maximum number of external user invitees |
Up to 10,000 unique external users per month.
What is an external user?
|
Up to 10,000 unique external users per month.
What is an external user?
|
When reviewing the information on the previous table, remember that the base storage limits for Office 365 for Enterprises (10 GB + 500 MB per subscribed user) will affect some of these values. For example, although SharePoint Online for Enterprise plans imposes a limit of 100 GB per site collection and a limit of 3000 site collections, your particular tenant might not have enough storage available to contain 3000 site collections of 100 GB each.
It’s a good idea to monitor the Recycle Bin and empty it regularly. Content in the Recycle Bin is counted against the storage quota for a tenant. For example, if the Recycle Bin on a site contains 25GB of content, that 25GB is subtracted from the available storage.
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Limits for site elements in SharePoint Online
There are also limits for site elements of a SharePoint Online site. Here are some examples:
- List and Library limits Different types of columns have different limitations. For example, you can have up to 276 columns in a list for columns that contain a single line of text.
- Page limits You can add up to 25 Web Parts to a single wiki or web page.
- Security limits Different security features have different limits. For example, a single user can belong to no more than 5,000 security groups.
The specific elements for the previous site elements are too numerous to list here, but you can learn more about them in the TechNet article Software Boundaries and Limits for SharePoint 2013. In this linked article, only the sections on List and Library Limits, Page Limits, and Security Limits apply to SharePoint Online.
Caution Feature-specific information in this TechNet article may not be accurate for SharePoint Online.
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Additional information about SkyDrive Pro limits
Each user in SharePoint Online for Office 365 gets an individual storage allocation of 7GB for personal site content. Personal sites include the user’s SkyDrive Pro library, a Recycle Bin, and personal newsfeed information.
All SharePoint Online in Office 365 plans include the same storage allocation for individual personal sites. This storage allocation is separate from the tenant allocation.
For more information about how users can manage their individual SkyDrive Pro allocation, see SkyDrive Pro library limits.
Additional Resources
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