LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 722 million members worldwide as of April 2022. With so many users, LinkedIn needs to implement certain limits and restrictions to ensure the quality of interactions on their platform. One common question is whether LinkedIn enforces any daily limits on things like connection requests. In this article, we’ll explore LinkedIn’s policies around daily actions and discuss whether there are any hard connection limits users should be aware of.
What are LinkedIn’s Daily Limits?
LinkedIn does enforce some daily limits on various activities, but these are primarily aimed at limiting spammy behavior rather than restricting normal use of the platform. Here are some of the published daily limits:
- Invitations – You can send up to 300 invitations per day to connect with new members.
- Search – You can perform up to 300 searches per day.
- Messages – You can send up to 300 messages per day.
- Comment Replies – You can post up to 300 comment replies per day.
- Comment Likes – You can like up to 300 comments per day.
- Shares – You can share up to 100 articles, images, or updates per day.
- Endorsements – You can give up to 100 endorsements per day.
The main goal of these limits is to prevent spam and abuse. LinkedIn wants to maintain the professional nature of interactions on their platform. So if you’re engaged in normal professional networking activities, you likely won’t run into any of these caps. They are set to allow for reasonable daily use.
Is There a Daily Connection Limit?
When it comes to your main network of connections, LinkedIn does not enforce a strict numerical limit per day.
The published limit of 300 invitations per day is there to prevent users from spamming lots of unwanted connection requests. But for accepted invitations that establish real connections, there is no set cap.
So if you get 10 invitations accepted in a day that turn into new connections, then get another 15 more accepted later, there’s no rule against that. You can essentially connect with as many new people per day as you can organically establish real relationships with.
There are some factors that may indirectly limit how many connections you can make in a day:
- Number of pending invitations – If you already have the maximum 200 pending invitations out, you’ll have to wait for some to be accepted before sending more.
- Daily search limit – You can only find 300 new profiles per day to potentially connect with.
- Account restrictions – If your account exhibits suspicious activity, LinkedIn may throttle some of your actions.
But if you’re networking normally within the platform guidelines, your daily connection ability is not explicitly capped at a certain number. You won’t hit an arbitrary connection limit just because you organically networked with 50 or 100 new people in one day.
Does LinkedIn Limit How Many Connections You Can Have?
While LinkedIn doesn’t limit the daily rate of you making new connections, there is an ultimate limit on the total size of your network.
Free LinkedIn accounts are restricted to having up to 30,000 connections. To access more connections than that, you’d need to upgrade to a premium Business, Sales, or Recruiter account.
Here are the connection limits for LinkedIn’s paid tiers:
- Business Plus – 30,000 connections
- Sales Navigator Professional – 30,000 connections
- Recruiter Lite – 30,000 connections
- Business – 100,000 connections
- Sales Navigator Team – 150,000 connections
- Recruiter – 200,000 connections
- Recruiter Corporate – 200,000 connections
So if making connections is core to your networking needs on LinkedIn, focus on organically building quality relationships within the limit allotted to your account tier. For most individual professionals, the free 30,000 connection cap likely provides plenty of room.
Strategies for Growing Your LinkedIn Network
While LinkedIn doesn’t limit the daily rate you can organically connect, focus on quality over quantity as you grow your network. Here are some tips:
- Personalize invitation messages – Make it clear you want to connect for a specific reason, not just spam out invites.
- Target connections relevant to you – Connect with those in your industry, alumni groups, communities.
- Engage meaningfully – Comment on posts, share content, offer insights when connecting.
- Follow up after connecting – Build the relationship beyond just accepting an invite.
- Get introduced through mutual connections – You’re more likely to establish quality connections.
- Avoid buying or selling connections – This will get your account restricted.
Building an intentional network focused on quality is better than just amassing connections. The daily limits are there to facilitate meaningful professional networking.
What Happens if You Exceed LinkedIn’s Limits?
If you do happen to exceed one of LinkedIn’s published daily limits, here’s what typically occurs:
- Your associated actions will be temporarily throttled and restricted until the next day’s limits reset.
- You may receive a notification from LinkedIn about exceeding the limit.
- For severe or repeated violations, your account may be restricted more extensively.
The limits are designed with reasonable daily usage in mind, so you’d likely have to intentionally spam a lot of messages or requests to trigger one. But if you do, just ease off that activity until tomorrow.
Temporary throttling is LinkedIn’s typical approach, but accounts demonstrating clear spam or abuse may face more permanent restrictions. Play by the rules and you can avoid any limit-related account actions.
Does LinkedIn Offer Unlimited Accounts?
Some social networks and SaaS platforms offer “unlimited” accounts with higher (or no) limits across various features.
LinkedIn currently does not market any unlimited account tiers. Even their highest-level Recruiter Corporate plan still caps total connections at 200,000.
With over 722 million members already, LinkedIn understandably needs to maintain some limits even at the premium levels to ensure stable performance. Opening up unlimited connections or messages at scale could risk degrading the quality of the platform.
So while you can expand limits by upgrading your account, unlimited access across all LinkedIn features is not offered at this time. The caps in place aim to strike a balance between enabling professional networking while preventing misuse.
Can Limits Be Increased by Request?
Since LinkedIn does not offer unlimited accounts, could you request special limit increases as needed even on premium plans?
Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not entertain individual requests or make exceptions to increase limits above the set caps for any account tier.
The limit settings are implemented at the software and infrastructure level to maintain the platform’s integrity. So customer support does not have capability to manually adjust or override them.
If you’re hitting a limit that’s impeding your particular professional use case, upgrading to the next account tier with higher limits is your only recourse. You can’t get special treatment through an individual plea for more connections or other resources.
Conclusion
To summarize key points:
- LinkedIn does not enforce a daily limit on the number of accepted connection invitations.
- You can organically grow your network without artificial day-to-day caps.
- Focus on quality connections within the total limit allotted to your account tier.
- If you do exceed a published limit, your associated actions will be temporarily throttled.
- Upgrade account tiers if you need more total resources like connections.
- Unlimited access is not offered, and custom limit increases are not possible.
When networking professionally on LinkedIn, be sure to stay within their standard limits and terms of service. If done properly, you should be able to grow your daily and total connections organically without arbitrary caps. But focus on quality over quantity, and upgrade your account if more resources are truly needed.