Microsoft Word · Rate Limits
Microsoft Word Rate Limits
Microsoft Word programmatic surfaces — the Word JavaScript API (Office.js Add-ins) executing in-app, and the Microsoft Graph Word / OneDrive endpoints — inherit Microsoft Graph's per-tenant / per-app throttling. Graph throttling is dynamic (based on resource consumption) rather than a single published per-second number; OneDrive enforces a documented per-user-per-app limit. 429 responses carry Retry-After.
4 Limits
Throttle: 429
Rate LimitingProductivityDocumentsMicrosoft
Limits
Microsoft Graph (per-app, per-tenant) account
Dynamic; see Microsoft Graph throttling-limits page for service-specific numbers
OneDrive / SharePoint (per-app, per-user) account
~1,200 / 5,000 requests per minute, varies by endpoint and license tier
Word JavaScript API (Office.js Add-ins) device
In-process; bound by host application performance, not metered as a network API
Word document protocols (WOPI / IRM) account
Subject to OneDrive / SharePoint throttling for the underlying documents
Policies
Honor Retry-After
Microsoft Graph and OneDrive return 429 / 503 with Retry-After. Pause for that many seconds, then retry with exponential backoff and jitter.
Decorate user-agent
Use a meaningful User-Agent / x-anchorMailbox header per Graph guidance to reduce throttling impact.
Use ChangeNotifications, not polling
Subscribe to OneDrive change notifications instead of polling /drive/root/delta to avoid hitting per-minute caps.
Batch with $batch
Use Microsoft Graph $batch endpoints (up to 20 requests) to reduce per-call overhead.