Guardrails for data activation
Last update: Tue Sep 16 2025 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
Check your license entitlements in your Sales Order and corresponding
Product Description on actual usage limits in addition to this guardrails page.
This page provides default usage and rate limits with regard to activation behavior. When reviewing the following guardrails, it is assumed that you have correctly connected to destinations.
- Most customers do not exceed these default limits. If you would like to learn about custom limits, contact your customer care representative.
- The limits outlined in this document are constantly being improved. Check back regularly for updates.
- Depending on individual downstream limitations, some destinations might have tighter guardrails than the ones documented on this page. Make sure to also check the catalog page of the destination you are connecting and activating data to.
Guardrail types limit-types
There are two types of default limits within this document:
Guardrail type
Description
Performance guardrail (Soft limit)
Performance guardrails are usage limits that relate to the scoping of your use cases. When exceeding performance guardrails, you may experience performance degradation and latency. Adobe is not responsible for such performance degradation. Customers who consistently exceed a performance guardrail may elect to license additional capacity to avoid performance degradation.
System-enforced guardrails (Hard limit)
System-enforced guardrails are enforced by the Real-Time CDP UI or API. These are limits that you cannot exceed as the UI and API will block you from doing so or will return an error.
Activation limits activation-limits
The following guardrails provide recommended limits when activating Real-Time Customer Profile data to destinations.
General activation guardrails general-activation-guardrails
The guardrails below generally apply to activation through all destination types.
Guardrail
Limit
Limit Type
Description
Maximum number of audiences to a single destination
250
Performance guardrail
The recommendation is to map a maximum of 250 audiences to a single destination in a dataflow.
If you need to activate more than 250 audiences to a destination, you can either:
- Unmap audiences that you don’t want to activate anymore, or
- Create a new dataflow to the desired destination and map audiences to this new dataflow.
Note that in the case of some destinations, you may be limited to fewer than 250 audiences mapped to the destination. Those destinations are called out further below on the page, in their respective sections.
Maximum number of attributes mapped to a destination
50
Performance guardrail
In the case of several destinations and destination types, you can select profile attributes and identities to map for export. For optimal performance, a maximum of 50 attributes should be mapped in a dataflow to a destination.
Maximum number of destinations
100
System-enforced guardrail
Type of data activated to destinations
Profile data, including identities and identity map
System-enforced guardrail
Currently, it is only possible to export profile record attributes to destinations. XDM attributes that describe event data are not supported for export at this time.
Type of data activated to destinations - array and map attributes support
Partially available
System-enforced guardrail
Streaming activation streaming-activation
The guardrails below apply to activation through streaming destinations.
Guardrail
Limit
Limit Type
Description
Number of activations (HTTP messages with profile exports) per second
N/A
-
There is currently no limit to the number of messages per second sent from Experience Platform to partner destinations’ API endpoints.
Any limits or latencies are dictated by the endpoint where Experience Platform is sending data. Make sure to also check the
catalog page of the destination you are connecting and activating data to.
Batch (file-based) activation batch-file-based-activation
The guardrails below apply to activation through batch (file-based) destinations.
Guardrail
Limit
Limit Type
Description
Activation frequency
One daily full export or more frequent incremental exports every 3, 6, 8, or 12 hours.
System-enforced guardrail
Maximum number of audiences that can pe exported at a given hour
100
Performance guardrail
The recommendation is to add a maximum of 100 audiences to batch destination dataflows.
Maximum number of rows (records) per file to activate
5 million
System-enforced guardrail
Adobe Experience Platform automatically splits the exported files at 5 million records (rows) per file. Each row represents one profile. Split file names are appended with a number that indicates the file is part of a larger export, as such:
filename.csv,
filename_2.csv,
filename_3.csv. For more information, read the
scheduling section of the activate batch destinations tutorial.
Maximum number of custom upload audiences to activate in a dataflow
10
System-enforced guardrail
Ad-hoc activation ad-hoc-activation
The guardrails below apply to the ad-hoc activation method.
Guardrail
Limit
Limit Type
Description
Audiences activated per ad-hoc activation job
80
System-enforced guardrail
Currently, each ad-hoc activation job can activate up to 80 audiences. Attempting to activate more than 80 audiences per job will cause the job to fail. This behavior is subject to change in future releases.
Concurrent ad-hoc activation jobs per audience
1
System-enforced guardrail
Do not run more than one concurrent ad-hoc activation job per audience.
Edge personalization destinations activation edge-destinations-activation
The guardrails below apply to activation through edge personalization destinations.
Guardrail
Limit
Limit Type
Description
10
Performance guardrail
You can set up dataflows to 10 Custom personalization destinations per sandbox.
Maximum number of attributes mapped to a personalization destination per sandbox
30
System-enforced guardrail
A maximum of 30 attributes can be mapped in a dataflow to a personalization destination, per sandbox.
Maximum number of audiences mapped to a single
Adobe Target destination
50
Performance guardrail
You can activate a maximum of 50 audiences in an activation flow to a single Adobe Target destination.
Dataset exports dataset-exports
Dataset exports are currently supported in a First Full and then Incremental pattern. The guardrails described in this section apply to the first full export that occurs after a dataset export workflow is set up.
Dataset Types dataset-types
The dataset export guardrails apply to two types of datasets exported from Experience Platform, as described below:
Datasets based on the XDM Experience Events schema
In the case of datasets based on the XDM Experience Events schema, the dataset schema includes a top level timestamp column. Data is ingested in an append-only fashion.
Datasets based on the XDM Individual Profile schema
In the case of datasets based on the XDM Individual Profile schema, the dataset schema does not include a top level timestamp column. Data is ingested in an upsert fashion.
The soft guardrail below applies to all datasets exported out of Experience Platform. Review also the hard guardrails further below, specific to different dataset and compression types.
Guardrail
Limit
Limit Type
Description
Size of exported datasets
5 billion records
Performance guardrail
The limit described here for dataset exports is a soft guardrail. For example, while the user interface will not block you from exporting datasets larger than 5 billion records, the behavior is unpredictable and exports might either fail or have very long export latency.
Guardrails for scheduled dataset exports
For scheduled, or recurring dataset exports, the guardrails below are identical for the two formats of the exported file (JSON or parquet), and are grouped by dataset type.
Exports to JSON files are supported in a compressed mode only.
Dataset type
Guardrail
Guardrail type
Description
Datasets based on the XDM Experience Events schema
Last 365 days of data
System-enforced guardrail
The data from the last calendar year is exported.
Datasets based on the XDM Individual Profile schema
Ten billion records across all exported files in a dataflow
System-enforced guardrail
The record count of the dataset must be less than ten billion for compressed JSON or parquet files and one million for uncompressed parquet files, otherwise the export fails. Reduce the size of the dataset that you are trying to export if it is larger than the allowed threshold.
Read more about exporting datasets.
Destination SDK guardrails destination-sdk-guardrails
Destination SDK is a suite of configuration APIs that allow you to configure destination integration patterns for Experience Platform to deliver audience and profile data to your endpoint, based on data and authentication formats of your choice. The guardrails below apply to the destinations you configure using Destination SDK.
Guardrail
Limit
Limit Type
Description
5
Performance guardrail
You can create a maximum of 5 private custom streaming or batch destinations using Destination SDK. Reach out to a custom care representative if you need to create more than 5 such destinations.
Profile export policy for Destination SDK
maxBatchAgeInSecs (minimum 1,800 and maximum 3,600)maxNumEventsInBatch (minimum 1,000 and maximum 10,000)
System-enforced guardrail
When using the
configurable aggregation option for your destination, be mindful of the minimum and maximum values that determine how often HTTP messages are sent to your API-based destination and how many profiles the messages should include.
Destination throttling and retry policy destination-throttling-and-retry-policy
Details on throttling thresholds or limitations for given destinations. This section also provides information regarding the retry policy for destinations.
Type of destination
Description
Enterprise destinations (HTTP API, Amazon Kinesis, Azure EventHubs)
In 95 percent of the time, Experience Platform attempts to offer a throughput latency of less than 10 minutes for successfully sent messages with a rate of less than 10 thousand requests per second for each dataflow to an enterprise destination.
In case of failed requests to your enterprise destination, Experience Platform stores the failed requests and retries twice to send the requests to your endpoint.
Next steps
See the following documentation for more information on other Experience Platform services guardrails, on end-to-end latency information, and licensing information from Real-Time CDP Product Description documents:
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