Fix Guide

How to Fix Salesforce API Limit Errors

Step-by-step fix guide with AI-powered diagnosis from BuildForce.

Salesforce enforces a daily API request limit (typically 15,000 per license × number of full licenses, up to a maximum). When exceeded, integrations return QUERY_TIMEOUT or REQUEST_LIMIT_EXCEEDED errors and stop processing until midnight Pacific. The immediate fix is to identify which application is consuming the most calls — usually an integration tool, report scheduler, or bulk sync job — and throttle or reschedule it. BuildForce's API health check identifies your top consumers and projects limit exhaustion timing.

REQUEST_LIMIT_EXCEEDEDDaily API LimitTop Consumer IdentificationRate Throttling

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Symptoms

Integrations returning REQUEST_LIMIT_EXCEEDED or EXCEEDED_ID_LIMIT errors

Scheduled jobs failing after midnight resets but failing again by afternoon

Reports and dashboards not refreshing with 'Data refresh failed' messages

Connected apps showing authentication errors that resolve at midnight

Bulk data exports timing out or returning partial results

Root Causes

Polling integrations with no backoff

Integration tools configured to poll Salesforce every minute consume 1,440+ calls per day before doing any actual work. Connected apps like HubSpot, Marketo, and ServiceNow are common culprits when configured without rate limiting.

Bulk sync jobs with per-record API calls

Sync jobs that make individual API calls per record instead of using batch endpoints can exhaust limits in minutes. A 10,000-record sync with per-record queries uses 20,000+ calls.

Report subscriptions and scheduled dashboards

Report subscriptions refresh via API. An org with 50 users each subscribed to 5 dashboards on an hourly schedule can generate thousands of API calls daily from report refreshes alone.

Orphaned integration users

Previous integrations whose access was revoked but whose connected apps still attempt API calls consume limit without delivering value. Orphaned apps can silently drain limits.

How to Fix It — Step by Step

Check current API usage

Navigate to Setup → Company Information and look at the 'API Requests, Last 24 Hours' field. If it's above 80% of your limit, proceed immediately.

Example

SELECT Id, ConnectedAppId, Count FROM OauthToken WHERE ConnectedAppId != null GROUP BY ConnectedAppId ORDER BY Count DESC LIMIT 10

Identify top consumers with API Usage report

In Salesforce Classic: Setup → Develop → API Usage. In Lightning: Setup → API Usage Summary. Sort by 'Calls Used' to find the top 5 consuming connected apps.

Throttle polling integrations

For each high-consuming integration, review its polling interval in the integration platform's settings. Change from minute-level polling to 15-30 minute intervals for non-time-sensitive syncs.

Switch bulk jobs to Bulk API 2.0

Replace REST API calls in bulk sync jobs with Salesforce Bulk API 2.0 endpoints. Bulk API calls count against a separate limit (10,000 batch calls per 24 hours) rather than the REST API limit.

Example

POST /services/data/v59.0/jobs/ingest
{
  'object': 'Contact',
  'operation': 'upsert',
  'externalIdFieldName': 'Email'
}

Remove or revoke unused connected apps

In Setup → Connected Apps OAuth Usage, identify apps with API calls but no active users. Revoke access for apps that are no longer needed.

Enable API usage alerts

Use BuildForce's API limit monitoring to receive alerts when usage exceeds 70% of your daily limit — giving you time to throttle before integrations fail.

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Common Questions

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