X (Twitter) Rate Limit Exceeded: What It Means and Fixes

“Rate limit exceeded” on X (formerly Twitter) means you did one action more times than X allows in a set period: posting, sending Direct Messages, following, changing your email, or loading posts. X blocks that action until the period is over. Your account isn’t suspended, and the fix is almost always to stop repeating the action and wait, from about an hour to a day, depending on the limit.

Users report a few versions of the message: “Rate limit exceeded”, “Sorry, you are rate limited”, or a message naming the limit you hit, such as Direct Messages. They all work the same way.

What does “rate limit exceeded” mean on X?

X caps how often each account can do certain things, to reduce strain on its systems. In X’s words, limits “alleviate some of the strain on the behind-the-scenes part of X and reduce downtime and error pages” (X Help: About X limits).

Three things are worth knowing:

• Limits are per account, not per device. They “include actions from all devices, including web, mobile, phone, API”.
• Third-party apps count too. API requests from every app connected to your account add up against the same limit.
• X can lower limits temporarily during heavy traffic, which is why a wave of rate limit errors often hits many people at once.

What are X’s current limits?

These are the limits X lists on its help page, as published in September 2026 (X Help):

Action	Limit	Window
Direct Messages sent	500	Per day
Posts (unverified accounts)	50 original posts and 200 replies	Per day, split into semi-hourly limits
Changes to account email	4	Per hour
Follows	400	Per day
Following more than 5,000 accounts	Extra follows limited by “account-specific ratios”	Ongoing

Two caveats from the same page:

• It still mentions “the post limit of 2,400 updates per day”, an older figure that sits next to the newer 50/200 rule. X hasn’t explained the overlap.
• The post limits are given for unverified accounts. X doesn’t list separate numbers for Premium accounts.

The daily follow limit is a technical ceiling only. X has separate rules against aggressive following, and breaking them can limit your account well before 400 follows. See account suspended or locked on X.

Why do you get rate limited just reading posts?

Because X also limits how many posts an account can load. In July 2023, Elon Musk announced temporary reading limits to fight data scraping: first 6,000 posts a day for verified accounts, 600 for unverified and 300 for new unverified accounts, raised the same day to 10,000, 1,000 and 500 (Engadget).

X doesn’t publish its current reading limits, so no one outside X knows today’s exact numbers. If the error appears while you scroll, search or open profiles, a reading limit is the likely cause.

How long does a rate limit last on X?

X doesn’t give a precise duration. Its help page says that for time-based limits “you’ll be able to try again after the time limit has elapsed”, and that if you hit the post limit you should “try again in a few hours” (X Help).

In practice, the window depends on the action:

You hit the limit on…	Window, per X	What to do
Posts or replies	Semi-hourly intervals within a daily limit	Wait a few hours
Direct Messages	Daily	Wait until the next day
Follows	Daily	Wait until the next day, and slow down
Email changes	Hourly	Wait an hour
Reading posts	Not published	Stop scrolling, try again later

Some sites state that every rate limit lasts exactly 24 hours, or exactly 15 minutes. X doesn’t publish those figures.

How do you fix “rate limit exceeded” on X?

1. Stop repeating the action. Each retry can count as another attempt. Close the app or tab for a while.
2. Check whether X is down. If many people report errors at the same moment, the problem is on X’s side and waiting is the only fix. X says it posts updates on its status site when it lowers limits.
3. Disconnect apps you don’t use. Scheduling tools, analytics apps and old integrations make API calls with your account. Review them in Settings and privacy → Security and account access → Apps and sessions → Connected apps.
4. Slow down bulk actions. Mass following, mass liking or sending the same DM to many people hit limits fastest and can also get the account limited for aggressive behavior.
5. Wait out the window, using the table above.

If the error appears when you try to change your @handle, see why you can’t change your username on X.

What does “Rate limit exceeded” (code 88) mean for developers?

In the X API, error code 88 reads “Rate limit exceeded” and comes with HTTP 429: “the request limit for this resource has been reached for the current rate limit window” (X API error codes, 2024 archive). Wait for the window to reset, read the rate limit headers in the response, and space out your requests instead of retrying in a loop.

Is being rate limited the same as being shadowbanned?

No. A rate limit blocks you from doing an action and tells you with an error. A shadowban, or reduced visibility, limits how others see your posts, usually without any message. If your posts seem to reach no one, run our free shadowban test.

For other errors, see the X troubleshooting hub, including “Something went wrong” on X.

Frequently asked questions