Data limits and guardrails
To improve performance, reliability, and scalability in all Jira Cloud instances (including Atlassian Government Cloud), new limits and guardrails are being introduced for custom fields, work types, work items, and spaces. These changes help you manage data more effectively and prevent performance issues as your site grows.
This page explains what’s changing, why, and how you can stay within the new boundaries.
What’s changing
Guardrails are recommended data thresholds. If you exceed them, your site’s performance may be affected. These are best practices, not mandatory.
Limits are data thresholds that can’t be exceeded.
New limits starting March 2026
Starting in March 2026, the Jira Cloud family of apps will enforce new hard limits on certain data types to prevent performance issues as your site grows.
The limits are:
Fields: Maximum 700 fields per space
Calculated based on fields included in the field configuration schemes associated with the spaces.
For select-list custom fields, there is a limit of 10,000 options per field across all contexts. Exceeding this limit will require consolidating options or reusing shared configurations to stay within boundaries.
Trashed fields do not count towards the 700 field limit.
No limit on the total number of custom fields across the site.
Work types: Maximum 150 work types per space
New limits starting September 2026
Starting in September 2026, the Jira Cloud family of apps will enforce an additional set of new limits and guardrails on certain data types to prevent performance issues as your site grows.
Field Options: Maximum 20,000 options per field
Work Item Security Levels: Maximum 50 work item security levels per space
Permission Grants: Maximum 50 users/space roles/groups per permission
Releases: Maximum 15,000 releases per space
Workflows: Maximum 150 workflows per space
Workflow Statuses: Maximum 200 statuses per workflow
Components: Maximum 10,000 components per space
Priorities: Maximum 100 priorities per space
Guardrails and best practices
We recommend following these guardrails for easier data management and configuration.
The guardrails are:
Work items: 18,000,000 work items per site
Spaces: 8,400 spaces per site
Space Roles
5000 space roles per space
2000 space roles per user per site
While there is no hard limit on the number of work items per space, you may experience performance impacts with larger projects due to factors like complex JQL queries, custom field usage, or board/backlog data retrieval.
How to meet the limits
You must have the following to do the things described in this section.
Role: Site admin
Fields and Work Types
The best way to reduce your footprint is to reuse existing global fields and delete outdated fields, work types, work items and spaces, helping to optimize your site for expansion and usability. Read about ways you can optimize your field configuration specifically
Start by understanding your site’s current usage.
The Field configuration schemes will show the number of fields included in your site. Unused fields are identified as those with no defined contexts, not appearing in any space, or not associated with screens in Jira. These evaluations may include updates by automation or third-party tools.
The Work type schemes will show the number of work types on your site.
Jira will let you know if you're approaching the limit, and offer ways to clean up unused data across spaces.
To view and manage your site’s usage:
From the global navigation, go to Settings (), then Work items.
From the sidebar, navigate to either Work type schemes or Field configuration schemes.
Review your fields or work types. Select Optimize scheme (even if you’re under the limit).
To remove unused fields or work types, select Review actions in the first section. Consider cleaning up your default field configuration by removing obsolete or rarely used fields.
To create a new scheme with only current and used fields or work types, select a space in Create a scheme variant, then Review actions.
Select Redefine configuration scheme to group spaces that use similar fields or work types and create a new scheme.
Starting in March 2026, if your space exceeds the 700 field or 150 work type limit, you’ll be prevented from associating additional fields or work types to your space until you reduce your data.
Existing configurations exceeding these limits will remain functional, and no existing data will be deleted. Exceeding limits does not directly degrade performance, but it may make management and troubleshooting more complex.
Optimize your spaces on Enterprise and Premium plans
The site optimizer can help you scope global custom fields to specific projects, identify unused fields, and create targeted field configurations. Read more about the site optimizer
Using a Standard plan?
Standard plan users can manage fields by reviewing field usage details in their field configuration schemes and using REST APIs or custom scripts for more detailed audits.
Field Options
More on optimizing field options
Work Item Security Levels
More on work item security levels
Permission Grants
Remove redundant or non-relevant space roles from the permissions.
Visit Settings → Work Items → Permission Schemes
Select the permission scheme that you need to optimise
Click on Remove next to the permissions that are breaching the limit
Remove redundant space roles from the permissions.
Releases
Delete unused releases to stay under the 15,000 releases per space limit.
In your project, go to Releases.
Find releases that are unused or no longer needed.
For each release you want to remove, open More actions (⋯) and select Delete.
If the release has work items, either move them to another release or clear the Fix release field, then delete.
Workflows
Delete unused workflows to stay under the 150 workflows per space limit.
From Jira settings, go to Work Items.
Open Workflow schemes and select the scheme you want to clean up.
Select Edit, then remove unused workflows from the scheme.
Delete any workflows no longer referenced, and delete obsolete workflow schemes.
Add, edit, and delete a work item workflow scheme
Workflow Status
Delete unused statuses to stay under the Maximum 200 statuses per workflow limit.
From Jira settings, go to Work Items, then open Workflows.
Select the workflow that contains statuses you want to remove, then click Edit.
In the diagram, select the unused status, remove incoming/outgoing transitions if needed, then click Delete status.
Delete a status in Jira Cloud Workflow
Components
In your project, go to Space settings → Components
Review the component list and identify components that are no longer used or needed.
For a component you want to remove, select More actions (⋯) next to it, then select Delete
If prompted, choose how to handle existing work items using that component (for example, move them to another component or remove the component value), then confirm.
Priorities
Delete unused priorities to stay under the 100 priorities per space limit.
From the global navigation, go to Settings (), then Work items
Select Priorities
Review the list and identify priorities you no longer need.
For each priority you want to remove, select More actions (⋯), then Delete
If prompted, choose a replacement priority for existing work items, then confirm.
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