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CloudWatch Limits

CloudWatch has the following limits:

Resource	Default Limit
Actions	5/alarm. This limit cannot be changed.
Alarms	10/month/customer for free. 5000 per region per account.
API requests	1,000,000/month/customer for free.
Custom metrics	No limit.
Dashboards	Up to 1000 dashboards per account. Up to 100 metrics per dashboard widget. Up to 500 metrics per dashboard, across all widgets. These limits cannot be changed.
DescribeAlarms	9 transactions per second (TPS). The maximum number of operation requests you can make per second without being throttled. You can request a limit increase.
Dimensions	10/metric. This limit cannot be changed.
GetMetricData	50 transactions per second (TPS). The maximum number of operation requests you can make per second without being throttled. 180,000 Datapoints Per Second (DPS) if the StartTime used in the API request is less than or equal to three hours from current time. 90,000 DPS if the StartTime is more than three hours from current time. This is the maximum number of datapoints you can request per second using one or more API calls without being throttled. You can request a limit increase for both of these limits.
GetMetricStatistics	400 transactions per second (TPS). The maximum number of operation requests you can make per second without being throttled. You can request a limit increase.
ListMetrics	25 transactions per second (TPS). The maximum number of operation requests you can make per second without being throttled. You can request a limit increase.
Metric data	15 months. This limit cannot be changed.
MetricDatum items	20/PutMetricData request. A MetricDatum object can contain a single value or a StatisticSet object representing many values. This limit cannot be changed.
Metrics	10/month/customer for free.
Period	Maximum value is one day (86,400 seconds). This limit cannot be changed.
PutMetricAlarm request	3 transactions per second (TPS). The maximum number of operation requests you can make per second without being throttled. You can request a limit increase.
PutMetricData request	40 KB for HTTP POST requests. PutMetricData can handle 150 transactions per second (TPS), which is the maximum number of operation requests you can make per second without being throttled. You can request a limit increase.
Amazon SNS email notifications	1,000/month/customer for free.