Overview

To ensure fair resource allocation across your workspace, Dust enforces rate limits on trigger executions. These limits prevent individual automations from consuming your entire workspace message allowance while allowing legitimate automation use cases.

Triggers can operate in two modes:

• Fair use mode: Counts toward your workspace message allowance (default)
• Programmatic usage mode: Billed separately, for high-volume use cases

Rate Limit Rules

Fair Use Mode

• 42 runs per trigger per 24 hours on fair use
• Applies to each individual trigger
• Uses a sliding 24-hour window (not a daily reset

• All triggers in fair use mode combined can use up to 50% of your workspace's daily message allowance
• Your workspace allowance is based on your plan: 100 messages per day × number of active seats
• This ensures triggers don't prevent human users from interacting with assistants
• Example: A workspace with 10 seats has 1,000 total messages per day. All fair-use triggers combined can generate up to 500 agent messages per day, leaving 500 messages for direct user interactions

Programmatic Usage Mode

For high-volume or truly programmatic use cases (e.g., PR reviews on every commit, IT ticketing automation), admins can request to move specific triggers to programmatic usage mode:

• Billed separately through programmatic usage
• Does not count toward the 50% workspace fair-use limit
• Frees up capacity for other fair-use triggers
• Can support much higher volumes (e.g., 1,000 runs per day)
• Note: This applies only to webhook-based triggers. Scheduled triggers remain on fair use by nature

What Happens When a Limit Is Reached?

When a trigger hits its rate limit:

• Incoming webhook requests are paused until capacity is available
• You'll see a chip indicating the trigger is rate-limited in the trigger details

Best Practices

Deciding Between Fair Use and Programmatic Usage

Fair use is ideal for:

• Daily or hourly briefings (e.g., morning digest of tasks)
• Email response drafting (a few times per day)
• Low-frequency notifications (status updates, document changes)
• Exploratory and testing use cases

Programmatic usage is appropriate for:

• PR reviews triggered on every commit
• IT ticketing systems with high message volume
• Customer support automation handling dozens or hundreds of tickets daily
• Any trigger running 42+ times per day consistently

Requesting Higher Limits

If your legitimate use case requires higher limits, workspace admins can contact support at [email protected] to:

1. Increase fair-use limits: Bump a specific trigger's limit within fair use (e.g., from 42 to 100 runs per day)
2. Move to programmatic usage: Switch a high-volume trigger to programmatic billing, which:
   • Removes it from the 50% workspace limit
   • Allows much higher volumes
   • Is billed through programmatic usage

When contacting support, please include:

• Description of your use case
• Expected daily volume

Need Help?

If you're experiencing rate limiting issues or need to discuss your automation requirements, reach out to our team at [email protected]. We're here to help you design automation strategies that work within your workspace capacity and determine whether fair use or programmatic usage is the right fit for your use case.