Users and Groups in Atlassian Cloud

In Atlassian Cloud, users and groups are often provisioned via SCIM. Also, during Data Center to Cloud migrations, users and groups from the source instance are brought into your Atlassian organization. Most organizations use a single user directory (userbase), though some large organizations use multiple directories.

Learn about SCIM provisioning: Understand user provisioning | Atlassian Support

Cloud migration overview: Cloud transformation guide | Atlassian

Recommended and Unsupported limits per user directory

Large directories sync slowly and can affect performance in Atlassian Administration and in-product experiences.

Recommended limits for user directory

Keep your user directory within these recommended limits to optimize performance.

• Recommended users: < 500,000

• Recommended users per group: < 250,000

• Recommended groups: < 200,000

• Recommended total group memberships: < 2.5 Million

Unsupported limits for user directory

Above recommend limits performance may degrade. Failures may occur if the size of the user directory continues to get significantly larger than recommended limits. To avoid unexpected failures, we’ve set limits on the user directory size

• Maximum users: 1 million

• Maximum users per group: 290,000

• Maximum groups: 250,000

• Maximum total group memberships: 8 million

If you need to provision more users or groups than these limits allow, please contact customer support to discuss your requirements.

User directory limit errors

When a user directory exceeds limits, operations may fail—often during SCIM syncs, migrations, or updates via Atlassian Administration or the Organizations API. See workflow docs for specifics; below is general guidance.

Exceeded Maximum users

This will occur if the number of users in the user directory exceeds the maximum limit. To resolve this, remove users from the user directory until the number is below the maximum limit. Ideally at or below the recommended limit. We recommend removing users that are no longer active or have been inactive for some time.

Exceeded Maximum users per group

This occurs if the number of users in a particular group in a user directory exceed the maximum limit for user in a group. To resolve this you will need to identify the specific group (either by Group ID or Group Name) and to remove users from that group until the number is below the maximum limit. Ideally at or below the recommended limit. We recommend removing users that are no longer active or have been inactive for some time from the group.

Exceeded Maximum groups

This will occur if the number of groups in a user directory exceed the maximum limit for groups. To resolve this you will need to remove groups from the ser directory until the number of groups is below the maximum limit. Ideally at or below the recommended limit. We recommend removing groups that are no longer active or have been inactive for some time from the user directory.

Exceeded Maximum total group memberships

This will occur if the number of memberships across all groups in a user directory exceed the maximum limit for group memberships. Total group memberships are typically the largest aspect of a user directory and therefore are particularly impactful on performance. To resolve this you will need to remove groups or group members from the user directory until the number of group memberships is below the maximum limit. Ideally at or below the recommended limit. We recommend starting by removing groups that are no longer active or have been inactive for some time from the user directory.

Support with limits

If you need to provision more users or groups than these limits allow or you are having difficulty resolving errors due to exceeded limits, please contact customer support to discuss your requirements or issue.