Like all social networks, Pinterest does have its limits. There are some obvious ones such as following limits. However, there are some limits on Pinterest that may surprise you. These are 5 limits on Pinterest. While I completely understand some of them, I cannot understand some of the others.
- You can only follow 300 people per hour. The people who get a big following by following a lot of people to get follow backs do not necessarily like this rule. However, this rule is designed to prevent spam. The problem occurred when some people decided to follow over 1 million users.
- You have a 500 character limit per pin. I love this rule because it gives me the ability to write more than I could with 140 characters. If a picture I pin has a story behind it, I can tell the story in 500 characters.
- You are limited to 200,000 pins. I do not like this rule. Although it is unlikely to affect me anytime soon, this rule limits the amount of posts someone could send out. Some of the pinners with over 1 million followers also have over 50,000 pins. One of the pinners had over 90,000 pins. When these people reach 200,000 pins, what are they going to tell their followers. Either pin #200,000 will say “Thank you for following this account. Please follow my new account,” or “That’s all folks.” On Pinterest’s official website, it says they cannot change this limit for any reason.
- You can only have 500 boards. I do not like this rule either, but it makes more sense. 350 boards with 1 pin each are not quality boards. There is a quantity of boards, but the boards are not that good.
- You can only like 100,000 pins. I do not see this as a concern. A substitute for liking can be repinning and unliking pins as you repin them. However, that also creates the issue of the 200,000 pin limit.
For the most part, these limits seem to serve a good purpose. However, I am not pleased with the fact that there is a 200,000 pin limit. What are your thoughts about these limitations?
After achieving 250,066 pins, 210 Boards, 17,998 Followers & I’m following 12,998, I’ve received the Pinterest message that I’m now done. Too Bad because I no longer pin. I could start another account but they help me with their message to kick my addiction to Pinterest. It’s definitely much more educational & satisfying than Solitaire. I will miss Pinterest, however I still have all my pins that I wanted to read up on but never took the time because I was too busy pinning.
Wow. Thanks for sharing. I’m not sure if they have a maximum amount of content you can post but that doesn’t sound like it should have happened.
Thank you for this helpful article, Marc!
I was wondering if there is a limitation on the number of people you are following in relation to the number of followers you have. I have roughly 2.6k followers and am following 50k+ people; I went overboard following people when I first made my account. Now I would like to decrease the number of people I’m following but Pinterest isn’t giving me the option to unfollow/view my full list of people I’m following. Do you know how I can fix this?
I would recommend using a different browser or the mobile app / desktop depending on what you previously used. I doubt Pinterest would prevent you from unfollowing people.
You can only unfollow a certain number of people too. I wonder if that number is 300 as well?? I just got blocked from unfollowing people. I am following so many, over 5000, and wanted to go through and thin out my list of people who I follow but it wont let me unfollow anyone else, and tells me to try again later.
I recommend trying the mobile app if you didn’t already, the desktop version if you didn’t already do so, or using a different browser. Social networks act differently on different browsers. i.e. It is SO MUCH easier to use LinkedIn on Chrome than using it on Safari.
Thank you so much. I have got many information from here that I am looking for many days.
My pleasure Sayeema. I am happy to hear that you enjoyed the post.
Hi Marc, I was wondering, is the pin limit the same? Can you still follow 300 people an hour in 2017? If so how many hours do you do it for in a day? I don’t want to get my account banned. Thanks.
I am pretty sure the limit has been unchanged but I don’t follow it as much as I used to. The best way to figure out is to experiment with it for two separate hours in the same day.
Thank you Marc!
My pleasure Karol.
Marc, you are a big help to all of us, and deserve to do very well…!
Thank you Zhuge 🙂
I thought the board limit was 500, not 350. I wish there was a free and easy way to upload multiple pics at once.
I just checked the official Pinterest website, and you were right. 500 is the new limit. Nice catch.
very helpful article for me
Thank you Safdar. I am happy to hear that you liked the article.
i would like to have more than 500 boards. what are my options
You can merge multiple boards together (move the pins from one of your boards to another related board). You can try creating board #501 because it is possible that Pinterest may eventually change the limit.
i thought the limit was 300?
The last I tried, you can follow up to 300 people at a time. Within an hour, the limit would reset.
Is it still possible to follow 300 per hour? Isn’t that seen as spam?
That’s the amount of people that Pinterest lets you follow in a given hour. As long as you post relevant content and ENGAGE with your followers, Pinterest won’t see it as spam. It’s spam when an account follows a lot of people without taking the time to engage with the audience.
I have 558 boards. Have an iPad? Try it.
Interesting Jill. At first I thought Pinterest changed its limit again but then I checked their site and it still says 500 boards. Maybe there is a small glitch within the iPad app that allows you to exceed 500 boards. I have never tried doing so myself.
200.000 pin is quite a Lott
Still some to go
It will take me a long time if I ever go past 200,000 pins. There needs to be a way to bulk schedule pins and then I’m hooked to Pinterest in the same way I am to Twitter.
Very interesting information about Pinterest. Thank you, I got a lot of value from this.
My pleasure Justin.
This is a stupid idea of Pinterest. Hope they will change these rules and limits soon.
Pinterest has these rules in place to protect from spam. Before these rules took place, some accounts followed over 1 million people in a few days and only had a few thousand followers to show for it (this was an attempt to “game the system”). Unfortunately, it affects people like you and me too. I think Pinterest will change its rules about the pin limit as more of the top users approach the limit (most of the people with millions of Pinterest followers also have tens of thousands of pins. Some are in the hundred thousands).
Thanks Marc Guberti for kind information.!! Can i follow 200 people daily. ??? Is there any type of risk of banning account?
That depends on the size of your account. Smaller ones doing this are seen as spammy ones, but the larger accounts are seen as the type of accounts doing this process to make more connections and provide people with value.
How many pins can I pin per day max?
I don’t know the exact limit of pins per day, but I know that there is a 200,000 pin limit.
I am not a person with a blog or business I am trying to promote so I am more a user of Pinterest for information (the kind Bloggers try to attract). I have run into a different limit when I spend time converting my Likes to Pins. I stumbled into some sort of limit as I am being told I have 30 Likes but only see 9. I guess they thought my likes going from 600 to 30 in a couple days was excessive so they will limit my access to the final 21 likes as some sort of Time-Out???
That’s interesting. It sounds like something a social network would do. My recommendation would be to like and unlike at a more consistent, but not dramatic manner (i.e. liking/unlking 20 pins per day). Thank you for letting us all know about another Pinterest limit.
What about the limit for pins per board?
Some boards have thousands of pins, but my recommendation is to keep most boards at around 500-1000 pins so it is easier for your followers to scroll through your entire board.
I’ve had one pin get repinned a LOT for some reason. The interesting thing is that it still states it’s been “repinned” 6,226 times, even tho it is still being repinned. That number never changes. Very strange.
Vic, that may just be a problem on Pinterest’s end. All social media sites, no matter how big or small, have their fair share of bugs.
I have been a big fan of PINTEREST for almost since it’s inception . But, I still don’t know alot about how it works…could you send me to a previous post of yours concerning the basic facts about PINTEREST and how to be a good pinner?? Thanks so much!
I will write a blog post about Pinterest basics soon. Until then, I do have multiple blog posts about Pinterest that can help. Just go to this blog’s search box and search “Pinterest” and a bunch of articles will come up.
Quantitative limits are not the only ones – I just found out bit.ly links are also banned on Pinterest. I can see why, but I’m still angry ;(
And Amazon links. The Amazon links are the worst, but I understand why they would get banned.
I would not worry about those limits. Pinterest seems to update them from time to time, as its user base grows. Right now, you can have 500 boards and 200k pins.
https://help.pinterest.com/en/articles/limits-pins-boards-and-likes
Thank you for the clarification.