Automation fails with "This step has exceeded rate limits" when generating a large number of subtask

[nagata shumpei]

Hi Community,

I'm currently testing Jira Automation in a Jira Cloud Premium Sandbox environment and would appreciate any insights regarding automation rate limits.

■Environment

- Jira Cloud Premium
- Sandbox environment
- Automation rules for automatic subtask creation 

■Configuration

There are four different work item types, and each work item type has its own Automation rule.

Each rule is triggered when a parent issue transitions to a specific status and then automatically creates a subtask.

■Test Scenario

I created approximately 400 parent issues and performed the status transition.

For each parent issue, the corresponding Automation rule creates a subtask based on the applicable work item type.

■Observed Behavior

Subtask creation works correctly up to around 250 parent issues.

After that point, the Automation audit log starts showing the following error:

"This step has exceeded rate limits."

Once this occurs, subsequent subtasks are no longer created.

Initially, the audit log displayed the rate limit error above. However, subsequent audit log entries only show "Multiple errors" without providing detailed information about the underlying component failures.

The issue is not limited to a single Automation rule. The same behavior occurs across multiple work item-type Automation rules.

■Additional Information

- Jira Cloud Premium subscription

- Monthly Automation execution limit: 200,000

- Current usage is less than 1%

- The audit log indicates a rate limit error rather than a monthly execution limit issue

- Testing is being performed in a Sandbox environment

- The first rate limit errors started appearing around the 248th issue

■Questions

1. Does Jira Cloud Automation have any rate limits related to large numbers of executions within a short period of time?

2. Are there any Sandbox-specific limitations or differences compared to Production?

3. Has anyone experienced similar behavior when bulk-generating large numbers of issues or subtasks using Automation?

4. Are there recommended workarounds, such as batch processing, delays, scheduled execution, or any other best practices?

5. Is it expected behavior that, after the initial rate limit error, the audit log only shows "Multiple errors" without more detailed information?

Any insights or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[Gor Greyan]

Hi @nagata shumpei

What you're hitting appears to be an Automation service limit, not your Premium monthly execution allowance. Those are separate limits, so having less than 1% monthly usage doesn't prevent a rule from being throttled.

Creating ~400 parent work items and immediately triggering four different rules to create subtasks can generate a large burst of Automation executions. The fact that failures start around the same point across multiple rules also suggests site-level queue/concurrency pressure rather than a problem with one particular rule.

I would avoid generating all 400 at once. Process them in smaller batches or use scheduled rules/JQL to spread the subtask creation over time, ideally outside peak hours. Atlassian specifically recommends this approach for large bulk Automation workloads.

Also check Global Automation → Performance insights around the time of the test; this can show whether the Automation queue was saturated.

Atlassian's service limits documentation is here.

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/automation-service-limits

Regards,
Gor