Service, account, and table quotas in Amazon DynamoDB - Amazon DynamoDB
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Service, account, and table quotas in Amazon DynamoDB

This section describes current quotas, formerly referred to as limits, within Amazon DynamoDB. Each quota applies on a per-Region basis unless otherwise specified.

Read/write capacity mode and throughput

You can switch tables from on-demand mode to provisioned capacity mode at any time. When you do multiple switches between capacity modes, the following conditions apply:

  • You can switch a newly created table in on-demand mode to provisioned capacity mode at any time. However, you can only switch it back to on-demand mode 24 hours after the table’s creation timestamp.

  • You can switch an existing table in on-demand mode to provisioned capacity mode at any time. However, you can only switch it back to on-demand mode 24 hours after the last timestamp indicating a switch to on-demand.

For more information about switching between read and write capacity modes, see Considerations when switching capacity modes in DynamoDB.

Capacity unit sizes (for provisioned tables)

One read capacity unit = one strongly consistent read per second, or two eventually consistent reads per second, for items up to 4 KB in size.

One write capacity unit = one write per second, for items up to 1 KB in size.

Transactional read requests require two read capacity units to perform one read per second for items up to 4 KB.

Transactional write requests require two write capacity units to perform one write per second for items up to 1 KB.

Request unit sizes (for on-demand tables)

One read request unit = one strongly consistent read per second, or two eventually consistent reads per second, for items up to 4 KB in size.

One write request unit = one write per second, for items up to 1 KB in size.

Transactional read requests require two read request units to perform one read per second for items up to 4 KB.

Transactional write requests require two write request units to perform one write per second for items up to 1 KB.

Throughput default quotas

Amazon places some default quotas on the throughput your account can provision and consume in a Region. These are the quotas unless you request a higher amount. To request a service quota increase, see http://www.amazonaws.cn/support.

On-Demand Provisioned

Per table

40,000 read request units and 40,000 write request units

40,000 read capacity units and 40,000 write capacity units

Per account per Region

Not applicable

80,000 read capacity units and 80,000 write capacity units

Minimum throughput for any table or global secondary index

Not applicable

1 read capacity unit and 1 write capacity unit

Note

All the account's available throughput can be applied to a single table or across multiple tables.

The provisioned throughput quota includes the sum of the capacity of the table together with the capacity of all of its global secondary indexes.

On the Amazon Web Services Management Console, you can use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor what your current read and write throughput is in a given Amazon Region by looking at the read capacity and write capacity graphs on the Metrics tab. Make sure that you are not too close to the quotas.

If you increased your provisioned throughput default quotas, you can use the DescribeLimits operation to see the current quota values.

Increasing or decreasing throughput (for provisioned tables)

Increasing provisioned throughput

You can increase ReadCapacityUnits or WriteCapacityUnits as often as necessary, using the Amazon Web Services Management Console or the UpdateTable operation. In a single call, you can increase the provisioned throughput for a table, for any global secondary indexes on that table, or for any combination of these. The new settings do not take effect until the UpdateTable operation is complete.

You can't exceed your per-account quotas when you add provisioned capacity, and DynamoDB doesn't allow you to increase provisioned capacity very rapidly. Aside from these restrictions, you can increase the provisioned capacity for your tables as high as you need. For more information about per-account quotas, see the preceding section, Throughput default quotas.

Decreasing provisioned throughput

For every table and global secondary index in an UpdateTable operation, you can decrease ReadCapacityUnits or WriteCapacityUnits (or both). The new settings don't take effect until the UpdateTable operation is complete. A decrease is allowed up to four times, anytime per day. A day is defined according to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC). Additionally, if there was no decrease in the past hour, an additional decrease is allowed. This effectively brings the maximum number of decreases in a day to 27 times (4 decreases in the first hour, and 1 decrease for each of the subsequent 1-hour windows in a day).

Important

Table and global secondary index decrease limits are decoupled, so any global secondary indexes for a particular table have their own decrease limits. However, if a single request decreases the throughput for a table and a global secondary index, it is rejected if either exceeds the current limits. Requests are not partially processed.

Example

In the first 4 hours of a day, a table with a global secondary index can be modified as follows:

  • Decrease the table's WriteCapacityUnits or ReadCapacityUnits (or both) four times.

  • Decrease the WriteCapacityUnits or ReadCapacityUnits (or both) of the global secondary index four times.

At the end of that same day, the table and the global secondary index throughput can potentially be decreased a total of 27 times each.

Reserved Capacity

Amazon places a default quota on the amount of active reserved capacity that your account can purchase. The quota limit is a combination of reserved capacity for write capacity units (WCUs) and read capacity units (RCUs).

Reserved capacity quota Active reserved capacity Adjustable

Per account

1,000,000 provisioned capacity units (WCUs _ RCUs)

Yes

If you attempt to purchase more than 1,000,000 provisioned capacity units in a single purchase, you will receive an error for this service quota limit. If you have active reserved capacity and attempt to purchase additional reserved capacity that would result in more than 1,000,000 active provisioned capacity units, you will receive an error for this service quota limit.

If you need reserved capacity for more than 1,000,000 provisioned capacity units, you can request a quota increase by submitting a request to the support team.

Import quotas

DynamoDB Import from Amazon S3 can support up to 50 concurrent import jobs with a total import source object size of 15TB at a time in us-east-1, us-west-2, and eu-west-1 regions. In all other regions, up to 50 concurrent import tasks with a total size of 1TB is supported. Each import job can take up to 50,000 Amazon S3 objects in all regions. For more information on import and validation, see import format quotas and validation.

Contributor Insights

When you enable Customer Insights on your DynamoDB table, you're still subject to Contributor Insights rules limits. For more information, see CloudWatch service quotas.

Tables

Table size

There is no practical limit on a table's size. Tables are unconstrained in terms of the number of items or the number of bytes.

Maximum number of tables per account per region

For any Amazon account, there is an initial quota of 2,500 tables per Amazon Region.

If you need more than 2,500 tables for a single account, please reach out to your Amazon account team to explore an increase up to a maximum of 10,000 tables. For more than 10,000, the recommended best practice is to setup multiple accounts, each of which can serve up to 10,000 tables.

You can use the Service Quotas console, the Amazon API and the Amazon CLI to view the default and applied quota values for the maximum number of tables for in your account, and to request quota increases, when needed. You can also request quota increases by cutting a ticket to Amazon support

Global tables

Amazon places some default quotas on the throughput you can provision or utilize when using global tables.

Default global table quotas On-Demand Provisioned

Per table

40,000 read request units and 40,000 write request units

40,000 read capacity units and 40,000 write capacity units

Per table, per destination Region, per day

10 TB for all source tables to which a replica was added for this destination Region

10 TB for all source tables to which a replica was added for this destination Region

Transactional operations provide atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) guarantees only within the Amazon Region where the write is made originally. Transactions are not supported across Regions in global tables. For example, suppose that you have a global table with replicas in the US East (Ohio) and US West (Oregon) Regions and you perform a TransactWriteItems operation in the US East (N. Virginia) Region. In this case, you might observe partially completed transactions in the US West (Oregon) Region as changes are replicated. Changes are replicated to other Regions only after they have been committed in the source Region.

Note

There may be instances where you will need to request a quota limit increase through Amazon Web Services Support. If any of the following apply to you, please see http://www.amazonaws.cn/support:

  • If you are adding a replica for a table that is configured to use more than 40,000 write capacity units (WCU), you must request a service quota increase for your add replica WCU quota.

  • If you are adding a replica or replicas to one destination Region within a 24-hour period with a combined total greater than 10TB, you must request a service quota increase for your add replica data backfill quota.

  • If you encounter an error similar to the following:

    • Cannot create a replica of table 'example_table' in region 'example_region_A' because its exceeds your current account limit in region 'example_region_B'.

Secondary indexes

Secondary indexes per table

You can define a maximum of 5 local secondary indexes.

There is an initial quota of 20 global secondary indexes per table. To request a service quota increase, see http://www.amazonaws.cn/support.

You can create or delete only one global secondary index per UpdateTable operation.

Projected Secondary Index attributes per table

You can project a total of up to 100 attributes into all of a table's local and global secondary indexes. This only applies to user-specified projected attributes.

In a CreateTable operation, if you specify a ProjectionType of INCLUDE, the total count of attributes specified in NonKeyAttributes, summed across all of the secondary indexes, must not exceed 100. If you project the same attribute name into two different indexes, this counts as two distinct attributes when determining the total.

This limit does not apply for secondary indexes with a ProjectionType of KEYS_ONLY or ALL.

Partition keys and sort keys

Partition key length

The minimum length of a partition key value is 1 byte. The maximum length is 2048 bytes.

Partition key values

There is no practical limit on the number of distinct partition key values, for tables or for secondary indexes.

Sort key length

The minimum length of a sort key value is 1 byte. The maximum length is 1024 bytes.

Sort key values

In general, there is no practical limit on the number of distinct sort key values per partition key value.

The exception is for tables with secondary indexes. An item collection is the set of items which have the same value of partition key attribute. In a global secondary index the item collection is independent of the base table (and can have a different partition key attribute), but in a local secondary index the indexed view is colocated in the same partition as the item in the table and shares the same partition key attribute. As a result of this locality, when a table has one or more LSIs, the item collection cannot be distributed to multiple partitions.

For a table with one or more LSIs, item collections cannot exceed 10GB in size. This includes all base table items and all projected LSI views which have the same value of the partition key attribute. 10GB is the maximum size of a partition. For more detailed information, see Item collection size limit.

Naming rules

Table names and Secondary Index names

Names for tables and secondary indexes must be at least 3 characters long, but no greater than 255 characters long. The following are the allowed characters:

  • A-Z

  • a-z

  • 0-9

  • _ (underscore)

  • - (hyphen)

  • . (dot)

Attribute names

In general, an attribute name must be at least one character long, but no greater than 64 KB long.

The following are the exceptions. These attribute names must be no greater than 255 characters long:

  • Secondary index partition key names.

  • Secondary index sort key names.

  • The names of any user-specified projected attributes (applicable only to local secondary indexes). In a CreateTable operation, if you specify a ProjectionType of INCLUDE, the names of the attributes in the NonKeyAttributes parameter are length-restricted. The KEYS_ONLY and ALL projection types are not affected.

These attribute names must be encoded using UTF-8, and the total size of each name (after encoding) cannot exceed 255 bytes.

Data types

String

The length of a String is constrained by the maximum item size of 400 KB.

Strings are Unicode with UTF-8 binary encoding. Because UTF-8 is a variable width encoding, DynamoDB determines the length of a String using its UTF-8 bytes.

Number

A Number can have up to 38 digits of precision, and can be positive, negative, or zero.

  • Positive range: 1E-130 to 9.9999999999999999999999999999999999999E+125

  • Negative range: -9.9999999999999999999999999999999999999E+125 to -1E-130

DynamoDB uses JSON strings to represent Number data in requests and replies. For more information, see DynamoDB low-level API.

If number precision is important, you should pass numbers to DynamoDB using strings that you convert from a number type.

Binary

The length of a Binary is constrained by the maximum item size of 400 KB.

Applications that work with Binary attributes must encode the data in base64 format before sending it to DynamoDB. Upon receipt of the data, DynamoDB decodes it into an unsigned byte array and uses that as the length of the attribute.

Items

Item size

The maximum item size in DynamoDB is 400 KB, which includes both attribute name binary length (UTF-8 length) and attribute value lengths (again binary length). The attribute name counts towards the size limit.

For example, consider an item with two attributes: one attribute named "shirt-color" with value "R" and another attribute named "shirt-size" with value "M". The total size of that item is 23 bytes.

Item size for tables with Local Secondary Indexes

For each local secondary index on a table, there is a 400 KB limit on the total of the following:

  • The size of an item's data in the table.

  • The size of corresponding entries (including key values and projected attributes) in all local secondary indexes.

Attributes

Attribute name-value pairs per item

The cumulative size of attributes per item must fit within the maximum DynamoDB item size (400 KB).

Number of values in list, map, or set

There is no limit on the number of values in a List, a Map, or a Set, as long as the item containing the values fits within the 400 KB item size limit.

Attribute values

Empty String and Binary attribute values are allowed, if the attribute is not used as a key attribute for a table or index. Empty String and Binary values are allowed inside Set, List, and Map types. An attribute value cannot be an an empty Set (String Set, Number Set, or Binary Set). However, empty Lists and Maps are allowed.

Nested attribute depth

DynamoDB supports nested attributes up to 32 levels deep.

Expression parameters

Expression parameters include ProjectionExpression, ConditionExpression, UpdateExpression, and FilterExpression.

Lengths

The maximum length of any expression string is 4 KB. For example, the size of the ConditionExpression a=b is 3 bytes.

The maximum length of any single expression attribute name or expression attribute value is 255 bytes. For example, #name is 5 bytes; :val is 4 bytes.

The maximum length of all substitution variables in an expression is 2 MB. This is the sum of the lengths of all ExpressionAttributeNames and ExpressionAttributeValues.

Operators and operands

The maximum number of operators or functions allowed in an UpdateExpression is 300. For example, the UpdateExpression SET a = :val1 + :val2 + :val3 contains two "+" operators.

The maximum number of operands for the IN comparator is 100.

Reserved words

DynamoDB does not prevent you from using names that conflict with reserved words. (For a complete list, see Reserved words in DynamoDB.)

However, if you use a reserved word in an expression parameter, you must also specify ExpressionAttributeNames. For more information, see Expression attribute names (aliases) in DynamoDB.

DynamoDB transactions

DynamoDB transactional API operations have the following constraints:

  • A transaction cannot contain more than 100 unique items.

  • A transaction cannot contain more than 4 MB of data.

  • No two actions in a transaction can work against the same item in the same table. For example, you cannot both ConditionCheck and Update the same item in one transaction.

  • A transaction cannot operate on tables in more than one Amazon account or Region.

  • Transactional operations provide atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) guarantees only within the Amazon Region where the write is made originally. Transactions are not supported across Regions in global tables. For example, suppose that you have a global table with replicas in the US East (Ohio) and US West (Oregon) Regions and you perform a TransactWriteItems operation in the US East (N. Virginia) Region. In this case, you might observe partially completed transactions in the US West (Oregon) Region as changes are replicated. Changes are replicated to other Regions only after they have been committed in the source Region.

DynamoDB Streams

Simultaneous readers of a shard in DynamoDB Streams

Do not allow more than two processes to read from the same DynamoDB Streams shard at the same time. Exceeding this limit can result in request throttling.

Maximum write capacity for a table with DynamoDB Streams enabled

Amazon places some default quotas on the write capacity for DynamoDB tables with DynamoDB Streams enabled. These are the quotas unless you request a higher amount. To request a service quota increase, see http://www.amazonaws.cn/support.

  • US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (N. California), US West (Oregon), South America (São Paulo), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), China (Beijing) Regions:

    • Per table – 40,000 write capacity units

  • All other Regions:

    • Per table – 10,000 write capacity units

Note

The provisioned throughput quotas also apply for DynamoDB tables with DynamoDB Streams enabled. For more information, see Throughput default quotas.

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)

Amazon Region availability

For a list of Amazon Regions in which DAX is available, see DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

Nodes

A DAX cluster consists of exactly one primary node, and between zero and ten read replica nodes.

The total number of nodes (per Amazon account) cannot exceed 50 in a single Amazon Region.

Parameter groups

You can create up to 20 DAX parameter groups per Region.

Subnet groups

You can create up to 50 DAX subnet groups per Region.

Within a subnet group, you can define up to 20 subnets.

Important

A DAX cluster supports a maximum of 500 DynamoDB tables. Once you go beyond 500 DynamoDB tables, your cluster may experience degradation in availability and performance.

API-specific limits

CreateTable/UpdateTable/DeleteTable/PutResourcePolicy/DeleteResourcePolicy

In general, you can have up to 500 CreateTable, UpdateTable, DeleteTable, PutResourcePolicy, and DeleteResourcePolicy requests running simultaneously in any combination. In other words, the total number of tables in the CREATING, UPDATING, or DELETING state cannot exceed 500.

The only exception is when you are creating a table with one or more secondary indexes. You can have up to 250 such requests running at a time. However, if the table or index specifications are complex, DynamoDB might temporarily reduce the number of concurrent operations.

CreateTable and PutResourcePolicy requests which include a resource-based policy will count as two additional requests for each KB of the policy. For example, a CreateTable or PutResourcePolicy request with a policy of size 5 KB will count as 11 requests. 1 for the CreateTable request and 10 for the resource-based policy (2 x 5 KB). Similarly, a policy of size 20 KB will count as 41 requests. 1 for the CreateTable request and and 40 for the resource-based policy (2 x 20 KB).

PutResourcePolicy

You can submit up to 25 PutResourcePolicy API requests per second across a group of tables. After a successful request for an individual table, no new PutResourcePolicy requests are supported for the following 15 seconds.

The maximum size supported for a resource-based policy document is 20 KB. DynamoDB counts whitespaces when calculating the size of a policy against this limit.

DeleteResourcePolicy

You can submit up to 50 DeleteResourcePolicy API requests per second across a group of tables. After a successful PutResourcePolicy request for an individual table, no DeleteResourcePolicy requests are supported for the following 15 seconds.

BatchGetItem

A single BatchGetItem operation can retrieve a maximum of 100 items. The total size of all the items retrieved cannot exceed 16 MB.

BatchWriteItem

A single BatchWriteItem operation can contain up to 25 PutItem or DeleteItem requests. The total size of all the items written cannot exceed 16 MB.

DescribeStream

You can call DescribeStream at a maximum rate of 10 times per second.

DescribeTableReplicaAutoScaling

DescribeTableReplicaAutoScaling method supports only 10 requests per second.

DescribeLimits

DescribeLimits should be called only periodically. You can expect throttling errors if you call it more than once in a minute.

DescribeContributorInsights/ListContributorInsights/UpdateContributorInsights

DescribeContributorInsights, ListContributorInsights and UpdateContributorInsights should be called only periodically. DynamoDB supports up to five requests per second for each of these APIs.

DescribeTable/ListTables/GetResourcePolicy

You can submit up to 2,500 requests per second of a combination of read-only (DescribeTable, ListTables, and GetResourcePolicy) control plane API requests. The GetResourcePolicy API has a lower individual limit of 100 requests per second.

Query

The result set from a Query is limited to 1 MB per call. You can use the LastEvaluatedKey from the query response to retrieve more results.

Scan

The result set from a Scan is limited to 1 MB per call. You can use the LastEvaluatedKey from the scan response to retrieve more results.

UpdateKinesisStreamingDestination

When performing UpdateKinesisStreamingDestination operations, you can set ApproximateCreationDateTimePrecision to a new value a maximum of 3 times in a 24 hour period.

UpdateTableReplicaAutoScaling

UpdateTableReplicaAutoScaling method supports only ten requests per second.

UpdateTableTimeToLive

The UpdateTableTimeToLive method supports only one request to enable or disable Time to Live (TTL) per specified table per hour. This change can take up to one hour to fully process. Any additional UpdateTimeToLive calls for the same table during this one hour duration result in a ValidationException.

DynamoDB encryption at rest

You can switch between an Amazon owned key, an Amazon managed key, and a customer managed key up to four times, anytime per 24-hour window, on a per table basis, starting from when the table was created. If there was no change in the past six hours, an additional change is allowed. This effectively brings the maximum number of changes in a day to eight (four changes in the first six hours, and one change for each of the subsequent six hour windows in a day).

You can switch encryption keys to use an Amazon owned key as often as necessary, even if the above quota has been exhausted.

These are the quotas unless you request a higher amount. To request a service quota increase, see http://www.amazonaws.cn/support.

Table export to Amazon S3

Full export: up to 300 concurrent export tasks, or up to a total of 100TB from all in-flight table exports, can be exported. Both of these limits are checked before an export is queued.

Incremental export: up to 300 concurrent jobs, or 100TB of table size, in an export period window between 15 minutes minimum and 24 hours maximum, can be exported concurrently.

Backup and restore

When restoring through DynamoDB on-demand backup, you can execute up to 50 concurrent restores that total 50TB. When restoring through Amazon Backup, you can execute up to 50 concurrent restores that total 25TB. For more information about backups, see Backup and restore for DynamoDB.