Short answer: Bluesky doesn't have a separate follow limit. It has one budget for everything you write: 5,000 points per hour and 35,000 points per day, per account. Creating something (a follow, like, repost or post) costs 3 points, editing costs 2 and deleting costs 1. That works out to about 1,666 follows or likes in an hour and about 11,666 in a day, across everything you do combined.
These numbers come from Bluesky's own developer documentation and apply to accounts hosted on Bluesky's servers. Self-hosted servers can set their own.
The Points System
| Action | Type | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Follow, like, repost, post, reply, block, add to list | Create | 3 points |
| Edit your profile, change a list's name | Update | 2 points |
| Unfollow, unlike, delete a post, unblock, remove from list | Delete | 1 point |
Limits: 5,000 points per rolling hour and 35,000 points per rolling day. Everything shares the same budget: a like and a follow cost the same, and both count against the same totals.
What That Means in Real Actions
| If all you do is… | Per hour | Per day |
|---|---|---|
| Follow accounts | ~1,666 | ~11,666 |
| Like posts | ~1,666 | ~11,666 |
| Unfollow accounts | 5,000 | 35,000 |
| Delete old posts | 5,000 | 35,000 |
| Follow a 150-person starter pack | 450 points, under a tenth of the hourly budget | |
Ordinary use never comes close. Bluesky says it set the limits above what its most active human users were doing. People who hit them are almost always doing something in bulk: following a huge list, mass-unfollowing, deleting their history, or running a tool that does those things for them.
The Catch: Two Different Kinds of Limit
"Rate limit exceeded" can come from two different places, and they behave differently:
- The write budget above. Hit 5,000 points in an hour and every write fails until enough of the hour has rolled off. Hit 35,000 in a day and you may be waiting most of a day.
- Request limits on the server. Separate from points, Bluesky's servers allow 3,000 API requests per 5 minutes per IP address, plus tighter limits on things like logging in. Scrolling and loading count here, not just writing. A third-party tool hammering the API can trip this on its own, and so can a shared network where many people share one IP.
There's also a softer layer: Bluesky's anti-spam systems watch for follow and like patterns that look automated, whatever the numbers. Following thousands of accounts quickly can get an account flagged even inside the official limits. The documentation says so directly: bulk or spammy interactions are against the Community Guidelines.
How to Tell Which Limit You Hit
- Only follows, likes and posts fail, but scrolling works: the write budget. Stop writing and wait. For the hourly limit that's usually well under an hour, because the window rolls.
- Everything fails, including loading the timeline: the request limit. Close the app for five minutes, check for third-party tools signed in to your account, and try another network.
- You can't log in: the login limit, which has its own rules. See Rate Limit Exceeded When Logging In.
Doing Bulk Actions Without Hitting the Wall
- Spread it out. Following 3,000 accounts is 9,000 points, about two hours of budget. Spread over a day it's invisible.
- Prefer lists to follows. If you want to read 2,000 accounts in a topic, a curation list you pin as a feed costs nothing to read and doesn't fill your Following timeline. See how to pin a list.
- Unfollowing is cheaper than following. At 1 point each, a cleanup of 2,000 follows is 2,000 points, well inside an hour.
- Leave room for normal use. If a tool uses your whole budget, you can't like or reply until it resets.
- Don't keep retrying. A failed action costs nothing, but tapping again and again just keeps the error on screen. Wait it out.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a maximum number of people you can follow on Bluesky?
Bluesky doesn't publish a total follow cap. The practical limit is the write budget: about 1,666 new follows an hour and about 11,666 a day, shared with likes, reposts and posts.
How long does a Bluesky rate limit last?
The write limits use rolling windows of one hour and one day. An hourly limit usually clears in minutes to an hour; hitting the daily limit can mean waiting most of a day.
Do likes count toward the follow limit?
Yes. Follows, likes, reposts, posts and blocks all cost 3 points from the same 5,000-per-hour and 35,000-per-day budget.
Can I get banned for mass following on Bluesky?
Rate limits are temporary and not a moderation action, but Bluesky's anti-spam systems watch for automated-looking follow patterns, and bulk or spammy interactions are against the Community Guidelines.
Do these limits apply to self-hosted accounts?
Not necessarily. These are the limits on Bluesky's own servers. A self-hosted server sets its own.
Built on the Same API
Skyscraper is an independent Bluesky and Mastodon client for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch and Vision Pro. Everything in this post comes from building it: caching, backoff and one long-lived session per account so you don't burn through your limits.