Power Platform Worst Case – Day 4: API Throttling: The Revenge

Power Platform Worst Case – Day 4: API Throttling: The Revenge

On Day 4 in our series exploring worst-case scenarios in the Microsoft Power Platform ecosystem, we’re delving into one of the most insidious and often overlooked issues: API throttling. What seems like a subtle degradation can escalate into a full-blown service disruption — the revenge of the API limits. In this article we’ll examine how API throttling works in Power Platform, why it can sneak up on you, what happens when you ignore it, and finally how to defend your flows and integrations so you don’t become the next victim.

What is API Throttling (and why it exists)

API throttling is a mechanism by which a platform limits the number or rate of requests a user or application can make within a certain timeframe. It’s different from a hard quota; instead it’s a guardrail to protect the system and ensure fair usage. In the context of the Power Platform, it comes into play because the underlying services (like Microsoft Dataverse, flows, connectors) must maintain performance and avoid being overwhelmed by noisy or runaway integrations. As described, “API Throttling … is essential for fortifying web applications’ functionality and safety. … when the request influx burdens an application … API Throttling … imposes restrictions on the number of requests an application accepts within a specific time period.”

More specifically, for Power Platform: each action in a flow, each connector request, each CRUD operation counts toward “requests” and is subject to daily, per‐user, and per‐flow limits.

Why does Microsoft enforce this? Several reasons: to maintain service quality (one tenant shouldn’t degrade the platform for others), to secure against abuse (e.g., denial of service style behaviour), and to align usage with licensing and capacity models.

2. How it plays out in the Power Platform — the revenge scenario

Imagine you’ve built a complex integration: multiple flows, many connectors, heavy data loads. On day‐one everything seems fine. Over time, usage increases, more triggers fire, loops execute more items. Only you didn’t realise each action counts as a request. Here’s where the revenge comes in: you hit a threshold or burst window, performance slows, some actions begin to fail, flows get queued or dropped, and the impact cascades. For example:

• According to Microsoft, licensed users have a 24-hour request cap (such as 40,000 requests per user for typical licenses).
• Additionally, there are burst limits: no more than 100,000 actions in five minutes, etc.
• When these are exceeded, flows can be slowed down or turned off. “Flows that violate them can be throttled, or slowed down, or even turned off altogether if they’re throttled continuously for 14 days.” So what does this revenge look like operationally?
• Your previously responsive flows now run erratically, delays increase, retry logic is triggered.
• Some connector calls return error codes (e.g., HTTP 429 “Too Many Requests”) or simply hang.
• Monitoring dashboards show unexpected drops or spikes in failed actions.
• Worst‐case: your business process relying on those flows fails (data not updated, notifications not sent, SLA breach). This is especially dangerous for high‐load integrations—e.g., mass data ingestion to Dataverse, heavy use of loops, automation triggered many times per minute. A blog post from a partner illustrates this for high-load integrations in Dataverse. Once throttling starts, recovery isn’t immediate: retries may also count toward your limit, you may need to modify architecture, you may incur trouble while users notice the lag.

3. Typical triggers and warning signs

To avoid being caught by surprise, you need to recognise what triggers throttling, and what early warning signs to watch. Triggers include:

• Unbounded loops or “apply to each” constructs that iterate over many items; each iteration is an action and hence a request.
• Frequent polling, high‐volume connector calls, spikes in usage (e.g., many flows triggering at once).
• Background processes, integrations, batch operations executed by non‐interactive users or application users. These also count and often fall under stricter pooled/non‐licensed limits.
• Lack of gating or conditional triggers: flows that trigger on “any change” but process even minor events, leading to lots of needless actions.

Warning signs:

• Sudden bursts of failed actions in your flow analytics.
• Slower performance of flows that were previously fast.
• Notifications or messages from Microsoft or your admin center indicating “throttling” or “service protection limit” enforcement.
• Reports showing high counts in “actions executed” exceeding typical patterns.
• User complaints that things are “slow” or “sometimes missing” – often the result of throttled or queued actions. By proactively tracking usage (via the admin centre, analytics, logging) you can see when you are approaching limits and take action before the full throttle kicks in.

The consequences of ignoring it

If you ignore API throttling risks, the consequences can be severe:

• Business disruption: Critical flows may be delayed or fail, impacting operations. If you rely on real-time updates (e.g., notifications, approvals), delays can mean lost opportunities or service level breaches.
• Data inconsistency: When some connector calls fail or are deferred, downstream systems may not receive data in time, leading to stale or missing records.
• Increased costs: You may need to purchase add-on capacity or higher licenses to raise limits. According to Microsoft, you can add “Power Platform request capacity add-on” packs to raise limits.
• Operational stress: Support teams scrambling, debugging delayed flows, chasing intermittent failures. These are often harder to diagnose than a straightforward bug because the root cause is hidden behind throttling.
• User frustration: End users or business stakeholders see “our system is slow” and may lose confidence, potentially leading to workarounds outside of the platform (shadow IT) which further complicate governance.
• Licensing & governance risk: When usage is unchecked, you may exceed your license entitlements. Non-interactive or background users may consume pooled capacity unknowingly. This creates audit or compliance risk. In short: throttling is not just a technical nuisance; it’s a business risk.

Strategies for prevention and recovery

The good news: you can mitigate API throttling with design, monitoring, and governance. Here are strategies to help you defend and recover.

Design with throttling in mind

• Use batching where possible: Instead of many individual operations, combine where you can (e.g., bulk updates rather than many single‐item updates).
• Avoid unbounded loops: If processing large collections, paginate, limit items per execution, track progress so that you don’t blow through action counts in one go.
• Use conditional triggers: Only trigger flows when necessary (e.g., filter triggers so you don’t run for every minor event).
• Implement retry/back-off logic: Recognise 429 errors and incorporate exponential back-off rather than immediate retries which compound the problem. The general API rate‐limiting literature explains how naïve retries worsen the situation.
• Leverage asynchronous/queued processing: If you have large volumes, push to a queue or process in batches rather than synchronous, real‐time flows for everything.

Monitoring & governance

• Track usage via the Admin Center (“Power Platform requests” reports) to see per‐user, per‐flow consumption.
• Set alerts for abnormal spikes in actions or connector calls.
• Establish governance: design ownership, review high-volume flows, tagging flows/integrations that run heavy loads.
• Use capacity add-on or upgrade licensing proactively if you anticipate heavy usage. As Microsoft notes: “If you anticipate exceeding the non-licensed user limits, reach out … purchase the add-on …”

Recovery when throttling hits

• Identify the offending flow(s): check analytics to see which flows triggered many actions or errors.
• Temporarily disable or slow down high-volume flows while you refactor.
• Optimize loops/connectors: reduce item counts, aggregate operations.
• Adjust trigger frequency or introduce batching.
• Work with Microsoft support if necessary: sometimes “service protection” limits are enforced and you may need guidance.
• After you recover, monitor for reoccurrence and implement preventive architecture changes.

Summary

API throttling in the Power Platform isn’t just a “nice-to-know” constraint—it’s a potential business risk waiting in the wings. The revenge comes when you least expect it: when usage spikes, when you neglected to design for scale, or when a background integration silently consumes a lot of actions. By understanding the explicit limits (per user, per flow, per day) and designing your automations accordingly, you can avoid being caught in the throttling trap. Monitoring, governance, smart design, and being prepared to act quickly when warning signs appear are your best defences. Remember: it’s not about avoiding usage—it’s about using smartly.

Power Platform Worst Case – Day 4: API Throttling: The Revenge