Every Salesforce edition includes a 24-hour API call allocation based on the number of licences and the edition tier. Each REST/SOAP/Bulk API call counts toward this allocation.
Edition allocations (approximate):
- Enterprise: 1,000 calls per Salesforce licence per 24 hours, plus 1,000 per Customer Community Plus and 200 per Customer Community licence, with a total cap.
- Unlimited / Performance: 5,000 calls per licence.
- Developer Edition: 15,000 calls per 24 hours flat.
- Bulk API jobs and Streaming API events have separate, generally higher limits.
How calls are counted:
- REST and SOAP API: each request counts as one call. Bulk API requests count differently — each batch within a job is one call.
- OAuth token requests count.
- Internal Salesforce automation (flows, triggers) do NOT consume API allocation — only external clients do.
- Login API calls are exempt from the daily limit (so you don't get locked out).
Monitoring:
- Setup -> System Overview — shows current 24-hour usage as a percentage.
- Setup -> API Usage Notifications — set up an email alert when you hit a percentage threshold (e.g., 80%).
- Event Monitoring (Shield) — log every API call with detail for analysis.
What happens when you exceed:
- Soft limit warnings as you approach.
- Hard limit hit — additional calls return an
EXCEEDED_LIMITerror. Existing sessions might still work for a while.
Common admin tasks:
- Audit which integrations are heaviest. Often one chatty integration consumes 50%+ of allocation.
- Talk to integration owners about bulkifying — using Bulk API instead of one-by-one REST calls.
- Buy additional API call packs from Salesforce if you're consistently capped.
Modern Salesforce orgs increasingly have hundreds of integrations; API capacity planning is a real admin concern.