Limits and specifications for Microsoft Teams

• Applies to:

  Microsoft Teams

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This article describes some of the limits, specifications, and other requirements that apply to Teams.

Teams and channels

Feature	Maximum limit
Number of teams a user can create	Subject to a 250 object limit¹
Number of teams a user can be a member of	1,000²
Number of members in a team	25,0006
Number of owners per team	100
Number of org-wide teams allowed in a tenant	5²
Number of members in an org-wide team	10,000
Number of teams a global admin can create	500,000
Number of teams a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization can have	500,000³
Number of channels per team	200 (includes deleted channels)4
Number of Private channels per team	30 (includes deleted channels)4
Number of members in a Private channel	250
Maximum size of distribution list, security group or Office 365 group that can be imported in to a team	3,500
Maximum number of members in an Office 365 group that can be converted to a team	10,0006
Channel conversation post size	Approximately 28 KB per post5

¹ Any directory object in Azure Active Directory counts towards this limit. Global admins are exempt from this limit, as are apps calling Microsoft Graph using application permissions.

² This limit includes archived teams.

³ To further increase the number of teams, you must contact Microsoft support and request further increase to the number of Azure Active Directory objects in your tenant. Increase is only made for real-life production scenarios.

⁴ Deleted channels can be restored within 30 days. During these 30 days, a deleted channel continues to be counted towards the 200 channel or 30 private channel per team limit. After 30 days, a deleted channel and its content are permanently deleted and the channel no longer counts towards the per team limit.

⁵ 28 KB is an approximate limit because it includes the message itself (text, image links, etc.), @-mentions, number of connectors, and reactions.

⁶ Shared channels members from outside the team count toward this limit. Further note that teams/channel mentions are blocked in teams with over 10,000 members.

Note

For limits for the shared channels preview, see Limits for shared channels (preview).

Messaging

Chat

Users who participate in conversations that are part of the chat list in Teams must have an Exchange Online (cloud-based) mailbox for an admin to search chat conversations. That's because conversations that are part of the chat list are stored in the cloud-based mailboxes of the chat participants. If a chat participant doesn't have an Exchange Online mailbox, the admin won't be able to search or place a hold on chat conversations. For example, in an Exchange hybrid deployment, users with on-premises mailboxes might be able to participate in conversations that are part of the chat list in Teams. However, in this case, content from these conversations isn't searchable and can't be placed on hold because the users don't have cloud-based mailboxes. (For more, see How Exchange and Microsoft Teams interact.)

Feature	Maximum limit
Number of people in a private chat1	2502
Number of people in a video or audio call from chat	20
Number of file attachments3	10
Chat size	Approximately 28 KB per post4

¹ If you have more than 20 people in a chat, the following chat features are turned off: Outlook automatic replies and Teams status messages; typing indicator; video and audio calling; sharing; read receipts. The "Set Delivery Options" button (!) is also removed when private group chats contain more than 20 members.

² Only 200 members at a time can be added to a group chat. See this article for more information.

³ If the number of attachments exceeds this limit, you'll see an error message.

⁴ 28 KB is an approximate limit because it includes the message itself (text, image links, etc.), @-mentions, and reactions.

Emailing a channel

If users want to send an email to a channel in Teams, they use the channel email address. When an email is part of a channel, anyone can reply to it to start a conversation. Here are some of the applicable limits for sending email to a channel.

Feature	Maximum limit
Message size1	24 KB
Number of file attachments2	20
Size of each file attachment	Less than 10 MB
Number of inline images2	50

¹ If the message exceeds this limit, a preview message is generated and the user is asked to download and view the original email from the link provided.

² If the number of attachments or images exceeds this limit, you'll see an error message.

For more information, see Exchange Online limits.

Note

Message size, file attachments, and inline images limits are the same across all Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses. Emailing a channel is not available in Teams for Office GCC/GCCH/DOD organizations.

Channel names

Channel names can't contain the following characters or words:

Type	Example
Characters	~ # % & * { } + / \ : < > ? | ' " , ..
Characters in these ranges	0 to 1F 80 to 9F
Words	forms, CON, CONIN$, CONOUT$, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 to COM9, LPT1 to LPT9, desktop.ini, _vti_

Channel names also can't start with an underscore (_) or period (.), or end with a period (.).

Meetings and calls

Feature	Maximum limit
Number of people in a meeting (can chat and call in)	1000, includes GCC, GCCH, and DoD, but not A1 (300). View-only allows for up to 20,000 listen-only participants to join a meeting in which the organizer has a license for E3/E5/A3/A5 SKU, as well as, Government (GCC, GCC High, DoD). The view-only experience will soon be available for webinars as well. Learn more about the View-only experience.1,2
Number of people in a video or audio call from chat	20
Max PowerPoint File Size	2 GB
Teams keeps meeting recordings that don't get uploaded to Microsoft Stream, available for local download	20 days
Meeting recording maximum length	4 hours or 1.5 GB. When this limit is reached, the recording will end and automatically restart.

¹ For the best experience in large meetings, webinars, and live events, Microsoft recommends using the latest version of Teams desktop client or Teams mobile clients.

² Presenters in large meetings, webinars, and live events should use the Teams desktop client. For more tips on hosting large meetings, please see Best practices for a large Teams meeting.

Note

Breakout rooms can only be created in meetings that have fewer than 300 attendees. In addition, creating breakout rooms in a meeting automatically limits the number of meeting attendees to 300. Advise your end-users to not initiate breakout rooms in meetings where they expect more than 300 participants. For more information on large Team meetings, share the guidance Best practices for a large Teams meeting with your end-users.

Meeting expiration

Note

A meeting URL will never stop working. The expiry only relates to any PSTN dial-in numbers, CVI coordinates, and/or underlying meeting policies and settings.

Meeting type	Meeting expires after this much time	Each time you start or update a meeting, expiration extends by this much time
Meet now	Start time + 8 hours	N/A
Regular with no end time	Start time + 60 days	60 days
Regular with end time	End time + 60 days	60 days
Recurring with no end time	Start time + 60 days	60 days
Recurring with end time	End time of last occurrence + 60 days	60 days

Note

Microsoft Teams meetings have a time limit of 30 hours.

Teams Live Events

Feature	Maximum limit
Audience size	10,000 attendees
Duration of event	4 hours
Concurrent Live Events running in a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization 1	15

¹ You can schedule as many Live Events as you want, but you can only run 15 at a time. As soon as the producer joins a live event, it's considered to be running. The producer who attempts to join the 16th live event gets an error.

For more information about live events and a comparison of Teams live events to Skype Meeting Broadcast, go to Teams live events and Skype Meeting Broadcast. See also Schedule a Teams live event.

Important

Microsoft 365 live event limit increases

To continue supporting our customers' needs, we will extend temporary limit increases for live events through June 30, 2022, including:

• Event support for up to 20,000 attendees
• 50 events can be hosted simultaneously across a tenant
• Event duration of 16 hours per broadcast

Additionally, Live Events with up to 100,000 attendees can be planned through the Microsoft 365 assistance program. The team will assess each request and work with you to determine options that may be available. Learn more.

Presence in Outlook

Teams presence in Outlook is supported on the Outlook 2013 desktop app and later. To learn more about presence in Teams, see User presence in Teams.

Storage

Each team in Microsoft Teams has a team site in SharePoint Online, and each channel in a team gets a folder within the default team site document library. Files shared within a conversation are automatically added to the document library, and permissions and file security options set in SharePoint are automatically reflected within Teams.

Note

Each private channel has its own SharePoint site (previously called "site collection").

If you don't have SharePoint Online enabled in your tenant, Microsoft Teams users cannot always share files in teams. Users in private chat also cannot share files because OneDrive for Business (which is tied to the SharePoint license) is required for that functionality.

By storing the files in the SharePoint Online document library and OneDrive for Business, all compliance rules configured at the tenant level will be followed. (For more, see How SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business interact with Microsoft Teams.)

Because Teams runs on a SharePoint Online backend for file sharing, SharePoint limitations apply to the Files section within a Team. Here are the applicable storage limits for SharePoint Online.

Feature	Microsoft 365 Business Basic	Microsoft 365 Business Standard	Office 365 Enterprise E1	Office 365 Enterprise E3	Office 365 Enterprise E5	Office 365 Enterprise F1
Storage	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization plus 10 GB per license purchased	1 TB per organization
Storage for Teams Files	Up to 25 TB per site or group	Up to 25 TB per site or group	Up to 25 TB per site or group	Up to 25 TB per site or group	Up to 25 TB per site or group	Up to 25 TB per site or group
File upload limit (per file)	250 GB	250 GB	250 GB	250 GB	250 GB	250 GB

Channels are backed by folders within the SharePoint Online site (previously called "site collection") created for the team, so file tabs within Channels share the storage limits of the team they belong to.

For more information, see SharePoint Online limits.

Class teams

Microsoft Teams for Education provides templates designed for unique education scenarios, such as classroom teaching. More information about team types, including class teams, is available in Choose a team type to collaborate in Microsoft Teams.

A class team is a template type with additional apps included, and with limits separate to the number of team members.

Note

Using class teams requires an Office 365 Education license.

Limits for class teams are listed in the following table:

Feature	Maximum limit
Number of members in a team	See the Teams and channels section of this article
Number of members to use Assignments in a class team	300
Number of members to use a OneNote Class Notebook in a class team	300

A class team can support more than 300 members. However, if you plan to use either the Assignments app or Class Notebook app within your team, you will need to keep the number of members below the maximum limits above.

Tags

Feature	Maximum limit
Number of tags per team	100
Number of suggested default tags per team	25
Number of team members assign to a tag	100
Number of tags assigned to a user per team	25

Contacts

Teams uses these contacts:

• Contacts in your organization's Active Directory
• Contacts added to the user's Outlook default folder

Teams users can communicate with anyone in your organization's Active Directory and can add anyone in your organization's Active Directory as a contact and to their contact lists by going to Chat > Contacts or Calls > Contacts.

Teams users can also add a person who isn't in your organization's Active Directory as a contact by going to Calls > Contacts.

Browsers

Teams fully supports the following Internet browsers, with noted exceptions for calling and meetings. This table applies to operating systems running on desktop computers.

Browser	Calling - audio, video, and sharing	Meetings - audio, video, and sharing1 2 3
Internet Explorer 11	Not supported	Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on IE11 without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing)  Microsoft 365 apps and services will not support Internet Explorer 11 starting August 17, 2021 (Microsoft Teams will not support Internet Explorer 11 earlier, starting November 30, 2020). Learn more. Please note that Internet Explorer 11 will remain a supported browser. Internet Explorer 11 is a component of the Windows operating system and follows the Lifecycle Policy for the product on which it is installed.
Microsoft Edge, RS2 or later	Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing4	Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing
Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), the latest version plus two previous versions	Fully supported	Fully supported
Google Chrome, the latest version plus two previous versions	Fully supported	Fully supported Sharing is supported without any plug-ins or extensions on Chrome version 72 or later.
Safari 14+	1:1 calls not supported. Group calls fully supported. Video: Fully supported Sharing: Fully supported	Meetings: Fully supported Video: Fully supported Sharing: Fully supported
Safari 13.1+	1:1 calls not supported. Group calls supported with full audio support. Video: Incoming only Sharing: Fully supported	Meetings are supported with full audio support. Video: Incoming only Sharing: Fully supported
Firefox, the latest version plus two previous versions	Not supported	Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Firefox without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing)
Safari versions before 13	Not supported	Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Safari without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing) Safari is enabled on versions higher than 11.1 in preview. While in preview, there are known issues with Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention.

¹ To give and take control of shared content during sharing, both parties must be using the Teams desktop client. Control isn't supported when either party is running Teams in a browser. This is due to a technical limitation that we're planning to fix.

² Blur my background isn't available when you run Teams in a browser. This feature is only available in the Teams desktop client.

³ Teams meetings on browsers are limited to a single stream; either incoming video feed of the current speaker or screen sharing.

⁴ Edge RS2 or later doesn't support sending real-time audio and video traffic through HTTP proxies.

Note

Running Teams in a browser is supported on PCs and Macs that meet the minimum Hardware requirements for Microsoft Teams. For example, running Firefox on the Linux operating system is an option for using Teams.

On mobile devices we recommend that you use the Teams app. The Teams app is available from the Android and iOS stores. Running Teams in a browser on mobile devices is supported but many features are unavailable.

Operating systems

For information about operating system requirements, see Get clients for Microsoft Teams.