Overview

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

This page describes trigger execution limits. These are separate from plan-level usage allowances, credit balances, and fair-use limits that may apply to your workspace under your subscription.

Triggers can operate in two modes:

• Fair use mode: Counts toward the regular usage allowance available to your workspace under your plan.
• Programmatic usage mode: Billed separately through programmatic usage credits, 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
• Fair-use triggers may also be subject to workspace-level guardrails to preserve capacity for direct user interactions
• The workspace-level calculation depends on your plan and contract

For legacy Enterprise plans, fair-use limits are transitioning from message-based allowances to credit-based limits. If your workspace is affected, Dust will communicate the applicable limit and effective date directly.

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 credits
• Does not count toward trigger fair-use capacity
• Frees up capacity for other fair-use triggers
• Can support much higher volumes (e.g., 1,000 runs per day)
• Applies only to webhook-based triggers. Scheduled triggers remain on fair use by nature

To request this, see Requesting Higher Limits below.

For details on how programmatic usage draws from your workspace credit pool and what happens when credits are depleted, see Credit Management.

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 mode, which:
   • Removes it from the fair-use combined limit
   • Allows much higher volumes
   • Draws from the workspace credit pool

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.