Quotas in Amazon Cognito
Amazon Cognito has default quotas, formerly referred to as limits, for the maximum number of operations that you can perform in your account. Amazon Cognito also has quotas for the maximum number and size of Amazon Cognito resources.
Each Amazon Cognito quota represents a maximum volume of requests in one AWS Region in one
AWS account. For example, your apps can make API requests at up
to the Default quota (RPS) rate for
UserAuthentication operations against all of your user pools in
US East (N. Virginia). Your apps in Asia Pacific (Tokyo) can produce the same volume of
requests against all of your user pools in their own Region. AWS can only grant a quota
increase request in one Region at a time. A successful quota increase in US East (N. Virginia)
has no effect on your maximum request rate in Asia Pacific (Tokyo).
Topics
Understanding API request rate quotas
Quota categorization
Amazon Cognito enforces a maximum request rate for API operations. For more information
about the API operations that Amazon Cognito makes available, see the API reference guides
for user
pools and identity pools.
For user pools, these operations are grouped into categories of common use cases
like UserAuthentication or UserCreation. For a list of
user pool API operations by category, see Amazon Cognito user pools API operation categories and request rate
quotas.
In the Service Quotas console
Operation quotas are defined as the maximum number of requests per second (RPS)
for all operations within a category. The Amazon Cognito user pools service applies quotas to all
operations in each category. For example, the category UserCreation
includes four operations: SignUp, ConfirmSignUp,
AdminCreateUser, and AdminConfirmSignUp. It's
allocated with a combined quota of 50 RPS. If multiple operations take place at the
same time, each operation within this category can call up to 50 RPS separately or
combined.
Note
Category quotas only apply to user pools. Amazon Cognito applies each identity pool quota to a single operation. For both per-category and per-operation request rate quotas, AWS measures the aggregate rate of all requests from all user pools or identity pools in your AWS account in one Region.
Amazon Cognito user pools API operations with special request rate handling
Operation quotas are measured and enforced for the combined total requests at the
category level, except for the AdminRespondToAuthChallenge and
RespondToAuthChallenge operations, where special handling rules are
applied.
The UserAuthentication category includes four operations in the
Amazon Cognito user pools API: AdminInitiateAuth, InitiateAuth,
AdminRespondToAuthChallenge, and
RespondToAuthChallenge. Additionally, user authentication in the
hosted UI contributes to this quota. The InitiateAuth and
AdminInitiateAuth operations are measured and enforced per category
quota. The matching operations RespondToAuthChallenge and
AdminRespondToAuthChallenge are subject to a separate quota that is
three times the UserAuthentication category limit. This elevated quota
accommodates multiple authentication challenges set up in your apps. The quota is
sufficient to cover the large majority of use cases. After your app makes up to
three responses to authentication challenges, additional requests count toward the
UserAuthentication category quota. Multi-factor authentication (MFA),
device
authentication, and custom authentication are all examples of challenge prompts that you
might engineer into your user pool.
For example, if your quota for the UserAuthentication category is 80
RPS, you can call RespondToAuthChallenge or
AdminRespondToAuthChallenge at a rate up to 240 RPS (3 * 80 RPS).
If your user pool prompts for four rounds of challenge per authentication and 70
users sign in per second, then the total RespondToAuthChallenge is 280
RPS (70 x 4), which is 40 RPS above the quota. The extra 40 RPS is added to 70
InitiateAuth calls, making the total usage of
UserAuthentication category 110 RPS (40 + 70). Because this value
exceeds the category quota set at 80 RPS by 30 RPS, Amazon Cognito throttles requests from
your app.
Monthly active users
When Amazon Cognito calculates user pool billing, it charges you a rate for each monthly active user (MAU). Consider your current and projected MAU count in your planning for quota increase requests. A user is counted as a MAU if, within a calendar month, there is an identity operation related to that user. When you link federated users to local users, the MAU count is one plus n, where n is the number of linked identities that have signed in. The activities that make a user active include the following.
-
Sign-up or administrative creation of a user. User CSV import doesn't contribute to your MAU count.
-
Sign-in
-
Sign-out
-
User account confirmation or attribute verification
-
Password reset
-
Change user attributes, group membership, or MFA preferences
-
Query detailed attributes of a user
-
User activation, deactivation or deletion
Note
The category Query detailed attributes of a
user includes the API operation AdminGetUser, but not ListUsers. A detailed user-by-user query in a large user pool can
have a significant impact on your AWS bill. To avoid excess charges, collect
user data with ListUsers or store user information in an external
database.
You aren't charged for additional sessions by any active user, or for any users that weren't active within a calendar month. In a month where you have changed your user pool feature plan between the available options of Lite, Essentials, and Plus, your bill for that month is computed from the sum of monthly active users (MAUs) in each tier, with each MAU assigned to the highest-priced assigned tier when the user was active. For example:
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At the beginning of the month, your user pool is on the Plus feature plan.
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User A signs in on the first day of the month.
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User B signs in on the first and last days of the month.
-
On the tenth day of the month, you switch your feature plan to Essentials.
-
User C signs in on the last day of the month.
In this scenario, user A and user B are Plus MAUs and user C is an Essentials MAU.
- Lite MAU
-
A user that was active at least once in a month when the user pool was on the Lite feature plan, and was never active when the user pool was on the Essentials or Plus plans.
- Essentials MAU
-
A user that was active at least once in a month when the user pool was on the Essentials feature plan, and was never active when the user pool was on the Plus plan.
- Plus MAU
-
A user that was active at least once in a month when the user pool was on the Plus plan.
For more information, see User pool feature plans.
Managing API request rate quotas
Identify quota requirements
Important
If you increase Amazon Cognito quotas for categories such as
UserAuthentication, UserCreation, or
AccountRecovery, you may need to increase quotas for other
AWS services. For example, messages that Amazon Cognito sends with Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) or
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) can fail if request rate quotas are insufficient in those
services.
To calculate quota requirements, determine how many active users will interact with your application in a specific time period. For example, if you expect your application to sign in an average of one million active users within an eight-hour period, then you must be able to authenticate an average of 35 users per second.
In addition, if you assume that the average user session is two hours, and you
configure tokens to expire after an hour, each user must refresh their tokens once
during their session. The required average quota for the
UserAuthentication category to support this load is 70 RPS.
If you assume a peak-to-average ratio of 3:1 by accounting for the variance of
user sign-in frequency during the eight-hour period, then you need the desired
UserAuthentication quota of 200 RPS.
Note
If you call multiple operations for each user action, you must sum up the individual operation call rates at the category level.
Optimize request rates for quota limits
Because increasing API rate limits adds costs to your AWS bill, consider adjustments to your usage model before you request a quota increase. The following are some examples of app architecture that optimizes request rates.
- Retry the attempt after a back-off waiting period
-
You can catch errors with each API call, and then re-try the attempt after a back-off period. You can adjust the back-off algorithm according to business needs and load. Amazon SDKs have built-in retry logic. For more information, see Tools to Build on AWS.
- Use an external database for frequently updated attributes
-
If your application requires several calls to a user pool to read or write custom attributes, use external storage. You can use your preferred database to store custom attributes or use a cache layer to load a user profile during sign-in. You can reference this profile from the cache when needed, instead of reloading the user profile from a user pool.
- Validate JSON web tokens (JWTs) on the client side
-
Applications must validate JWT tokens before trusting them. You can verify the signature and validity of tokens on the client side without sending API requests to a user pool. After the token is validated, you can trust claims in the token and use the claims instead of making more
getUserAPI calls. For more information, see Verifying a JSON Web Token. - Throttle traffic to your web application with a waiting room
-
If you expect traffic from a large number of users signing in during a time-bound event, such as taking an exam or attending a live event, you can optimize request traffic with self-throttling mechanisms. You can, for example, set up a waiting room where users can stand by until a session is available, allowing you to process requests when you have available capacity. See the AWS Virtual Waiting Room solution
for a reference architecture of a waiting room. - Cache JWTs
-
Reuse access tokens until they expire. For an example framework with token caching in an API Gateway, see Managing user pool token expiration and caching. Instead of generating API requests to query user information, cache ID tokens until they expire, and read user attributes from the cache.
For more information about working with API request rates in AWS, see Managing and monitoring API throttling in your workloads
Track quota usage
Amazon Cognito generates CallCount and ThrottleCount metrics
in Amazon CloudWatch for each API operation category at the account level. You can use
CallCount to track the total number of calls customers made related
to a category. You can use ThrottleCount to track the total number of
throttled calls related to a category. You can use the CallCount and
ThrottleCount metrics with the Sum statistic to count
the total number of calls in a category. For more information, see CloudWatch usage
metrics.
When monitoring service quotas, utilization is the percentage of a service quota in use. For example, if the quota value is 200 resources, and 150 resources are in use, the utilization is 75%. Usage is the number of resources or operations in use for a service quota.
Tracking usage through CloudWatch metrics
You can track and collect Amazon Cognito user pools utilization metrics with CloudWatch. The CloudWatch dashboard displays metrics about every AWS service that you use. With CloudWatch, you can create metric alarms to notify you or change a specific resource that you are monitoring. For more information about CloudWatch metrics, see Track your CloudWatch usage metrics.
Tracking utilization through Service Quotas metrics
Amazon Cognito user pools are integrated with Service Quotas, a console interface to display and manage your service quota usage. In the Service Quotas console, you can look up the value of a specific quota, view monitoring information, request a quota increase, or set up CloudWatch alarms. After your account has been active for a while, you can view a graph of your resource utilization.
The Applied account-level quota value column in the Service Quotas
console for Amazon Cognito user pools
Track monthly active users (MAUs)
The number of monthly active users (MAUs) in your user pool contributes important
data to your planning for increases to request-rate quotas. You can compare your API
request rates to the number of users you had active in a given time period. With
that knowledge, you can calculate how an increase in active users of your
applications will affect your quotas in your usage model. For example, imagine that
your combined applications in US West (Oregon) resulted in 2 million active users
in a month and your UserAuthentication category received occasional
throttling errors at the default quota of 120 requests per second (RPS). In the
previous month, before your successful advertising campaign, you had 1 million MAUs
and your applications never exceeded 80 RPS. If you anticipate a similar spike as a
result of a new TV spot, you might purchase an additional 40 RPS to accommodate the
next million users with an adjusted quota of 160 RPS.
To review your MAUs
Access the AWS Billing
console
Requesting a quota increase
Amazon Cognito has a quota for the maximum number of operations per second that you can
perform in your user pools and identity pools in each AWS Region. You can purchase
an increase to adjustable Amazon Cognito user pools API request rate quotas. Check your current quota
and purchase an increase from the Service Quotas console or with the Service Quotas API operations
ListAWSDefaultServiceQuotas and
RequestServiceQuotaIncrease.
-
To purchase a quota increase using the Service Quotas console, see Requesting a API quota increase in the Service Quotas User Guide.
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AWS targets completion of quota increase requests within 10 days. However, several considerations might cause the request processing time to exceed 10 days. Some requests, for example, might require Amazon Cognito to provision additional hardware capacity, and seasonal increases in request volumes might introduce delays.
-
If the quota isn't available in Service Quotas, use the Service limit increase form
.
Important
Only adjustable quotas can be increased. You must purchase increased quota
capacity. For quota-increase pricing, see Amazon Cognito pricing
Amazon Cognito user pools API operation categories and request rate quotas
Because Amazon Cognito has overlapping classes of API operations with differing authorization models, each operation belongs to a category. Each category has its own pooled quota for all member API operations, across all user pools in one AWS Region in your account. You can only request an increase to adjustable category quotas. For more information, see Requesting a quota increase. Quota adjustments apply to the user pools in your account in a single Region. Amazon Cognito restricts operations in some categories3 to 5 requests per second (RPS), per user pool. The Default quota (RPS) additionally applies to all user pools in an AWS account.
Note
The quota for each category is measured in Monthly Active Users (MAUs). AWS accounts with fewer than two million MAUs can operate within the default quota. If you have less than one million MAUs and Amazon Cognito is throttling requests, consider optimizing your app. For more information, see Optimize request rates for quota limits.
Category operation quotas are applied across all users in all user pools within one AWS Region. Amazon Cognito also maintains a quota for the number of requests that your app can generate against one user. You must limit per-user API requests as shown in the following table.
Amazon Cognito user pools per-user request rate quotas
| Operation | Operations per user per second |
|---|---|
| Read user profile Examples: |
10 |
| Write user profile Examples: |
10 |
You must limit per-category API requests as shown in the following table.
Amazon Cognito user pools per-category request rate quotas
| Category | Description | Default quota (RPS) | Adjustable |
|---|---|---|---|
UserAuthentication
|
Operations that authenticate (sign in) a user. These operations are subject to Amazon Cognito user pools API operations with special request rate handling . |
120 | Yes |
UserCreation |
Operations that create or confirm an Amazon Cognito local user. This is a user that is created and verified directly by your Amazon Cognito user pools. | 50 | Yes |
UserFederationOperations that federate (authenticate) users with a third-party identity provider into your Amazon Cognito user pools. |
Operations that submit an IdP response to a user pool federation endpoint. OIDC or social provider operations that result in an IdP token, and all SAML requests, contribute to this quota. | 25 | Yes |
UserAccountRecovery |
Operations that recover a user's account, or change or update a user's password. | 30 | No |
UserRead |
Operations that retrieve a user from your user pools. | 120 | Yes |
UserUpdate |
Operations that you use to manage users and user attributes. | 25 | No |
UserToken |
Operations for token management | 120 | Yes |
UserResourceRead |
Operations that retrieve user resource information from Amazon Cognito, such as a remembered device or a group membership. | 50 | Yes |
UserResourceUpdate |
Operations that update resource information for a user, such as a remembered device or a group membership. | 25 | No |
UserList |
Operations that return a list of users. | 30 | No |
UserPoolRead |
Operations that read your user pools. | 15 | No |
UserPoolUpdate |
Operations that create, update, or delete your user pools. | 15 | No |
UserPoolResourceRead |
Operations that retrieve information about resources, such as groups or resource servers, from a user pool.3 | 20 | No |
UserPoolResourceUpdate |
Operations that modify resources, such as groups or resource servers, in a user pool.3 | 15 | No |
UserPoolClientRead |
Operations that retrieve information about your user pool clients.3 | 15 | No |
UserPoolClientUpdate |
Operations that create, update, and delete your user pool clients.3 | 15 | No |
ClientAuthentication
|
Operations that generate credentials to be used in authorizing machine-to-machine requests | 150 | No |
1 A RespondToAuthChallenge or
AdminRespondToAuthChallenge response with a ChallengeName
of NEW_PASSWORD_REQUIRED counts toward the UserAccountRecovery
category. All other challenge responses count toward the UserAuthentication
category.
2
Each hosted UI operation during sign-in contributes one request to the quota. For
example, a user who signs in and provides an MFA code contributes 2 requests. Token
redemption in authorization-code grants is subject to an additional quota allocation at
the same rate as your quota in the UserAuthentication category.
3 Any individual operation in this category has a constraint that prevents the operation from being called at a rate higher than 5 RPS for a single user pool.
Amazon Cognito identity pools (federated identities) API operation request rate quotas
| Operation | Description | Default quota (RPS)1 | Adjustable | Quota increase eligibility |
|---|---|---|---|---|
GetId |
Retrieve an identity ID from an identity pool. | 25 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
GetOpenIdToken |
Retrieve an OpenID token from an identity pool in the classic workflow. | 200 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
GetCredentialsForIdentity |
Retrieve AWS credentials from an identity pool in the enhanced workflow. | 200 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
GetOpenIdTokenForDeveloperIdentity |
Retrieve an OpenID token from an identity pool in the developer workflow. | 50 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
ListIdentities |
Retrieve a list of identity IDs in an identity pool. | 5 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
DeleteIdentities |
Delete one or more registered identities from an identity pool. | 10 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
TagResource |
Apply a tag to an identity pool. | 5 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
UntagResource |
Remove a tag from an identity pool. | 5 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
ListTagsForResource |
Display a list of the tags applied to an identity pool. | 10 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
1 The default quota is the minimum request rate quota for the identity pools in any AWS Region in your AWS account. Your RPS quota might be higher in some Regions.
Quotas on resource number and size
Resource quotas are the maximum number or size of resources, input fields, time duration, and other miscellaneous features in Amazon Cognito.
You can request an adjustment to some resource quotas in the Service Quotas console or from a
Service limit increase form
Note
Resource quotas at the AWS account level, like User pools per Region, apply to Amazon Cognito resources in each AWS Region. For example, you can have 1,000 user pools in US East (N. Virginia) and another 1,000 in Europe (Stockholm).
The following tables indicate default resource quotas, and whether they're adjustable.
Amazon Cognito user pools resource quotas
| Resource | Quota | Adjustable | Maximum quota |
|---|---|---|---|
| App clients per user pool | 1,000 | Yes | 10,000 |
| User pools per Region | 1,000 | Yes | 10,000 |
| Identity providers per user pool | 300 | Yes | 1,000 |
| Resource servers per user pool | 25 | Yes | 300 |
| Users per user pool | 40,000,000 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
| Total combined changes in pre token generation Lambda trigger1 | 5,000 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
| Custom attributes per user pool | 50 | No | N/A |
| Characters per attribute | 2,048 bytes | No | N/A |
| Characters in custom attribute name | 20 | No | N/A |
| Required minimum password characters in password policy | 6–99 | No | N/A |
| Email messages sent daily per AWS account2 | 50 | No | N/A |
| Characters in email subject | 140 | No | N/A |
| Characters in email message | 20,000 | No | N/A |
| Characters in SMS verification message | 140 | No | N/A |
| Characters in password | 256 | No | N/A |
| Characters in identity provider name | 32 | No | N/A |
| Characters in a SAML response | 100,000 | No | N/A |
| Identifiers per identity provider | 50 | No | N/A |
| Identities linked to a user | 5 | No | N/A |
| Callback URLs per app client | 100 | No | N/A |
| Logout URLs per app client | 100 | No | N/A |
| Scopes per resource server | 100 | No | N/A |
| Scopes per app client | 50 | No | N/A |
| Custom domains per account | 4 | No | N/A |
| Groups to which each user can belong | 100 | No | N/A |
| Groups per user pool | 10,000 | No | N/A |
1 This quota might be encountered in tokens from a Pre token generation Lambda trigger. The number of existing and added claims plus scopes in access and identity tokens in one transaction must add up to a number smaller than or equal to this quota. Suppressed claims and scopes don't contribute to this quota.
2 This quota applies only if you are using the default email feature for an Amazon Cognito user pool. For a higher email delivery volume, configure your user pool to use your Amazon SES email configuration. For more information, see Email settings for Amazon Cognito user pools.
Amazon Cognito user pools session validity parameters
| Token | Quota |
|---|---|
| ID token | 5 minutes – 1 day |
| Refresh token | 1 hour – 3,650 days |
| Access token | 5 minutes – 1 day |
| Hosted UI session cookie | 1 hour |
| Authentication session token | 3 minutes – 15 minutes |
Amazon Cognito user pools code security resource quotas (non-adjustable)
| Resource | Quota |
|---|---|
| Sign-up confirmation code validity period | 24 hours |
| User attribute verification code validity period | 24 hours |
| Multi-factor authentication (MFA) code validity period | 3–15 minutes |
| Forgot password code validity period | 1 hour |
Maximum number of ConfirmForgotPassword and
ForgotPassword requests per user per
hour1 |
5–20 |
Maximum number of ResendConfirmationCode requests per
user per hour |
5 |
Maximum number of ConfirmSignUp requests per user per
hour |
15 |
Maximum number of ChangePassword requests per user per
hour |
5 |
Maximum number of GetUserAttributeVerificationCode
requests per user per hour |
5 |
Maximum number of VerifyUserAttribute requests per user
per hour |
15 |
1 Amazon Cognito evaluates risk factors in the request to update passwords and assigns a quota that's tied to the evaluated risk level. For more information, see Forgot password behavior.
Amazon Cognito user pools user import job resource quotas
| Resource | Quota | Adjustable | Maximum quota |
|---|---|---|---|
| User import jobs per user pool | 1,000 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
| Maximum characters per user import CSV row | 16,000 | No | N/A |
| Maximum CSV file size | 100 MB | No | N/A |
| Maximum number of users per CSV file | 500,000 | No | N/A |
Amazon Cognito identity pools (federated identities) resource quotas
| Resource | Quota | Adjustable | Maximum quota |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity pools per account | 1,000 | Yes | N/A |
| Amazon Cognito user pool providers per identity pool | 50 | Yes | 1000 |
| Character length of an identity pool name | 128 bytes | No | N/A |
| Character length of a login provider name | 2,048 bytes | No | N/A |
| Identities per identity pool | Unlimited | No | N/A |
| Identity providers for which role mappings can be specified | 10 | No | N/A |
| Results from a single list or lookup call | 60 | No | N/A |
| Role-based access control (RBAC) rules | 25 | No | N/A |
Amazon Cognito Sync resource quotas
| Resource | Quota | Adjustable | Maximum quota |
|---|---|---|---|
| Datasets per identity | 20 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
| Records per dataset | 1,024 | Yes | Contact your account team. |
| Size of a single dataset | 1 MB | Yes | Contact your account team. |
| Characters in dataset name | 128 bytes | No | N/A |
| Waiting time for a bulk publish after a successful request | 24 hours | No | N/A |
