Introducing limits on custom pipeline variables in Bitbucket Pipelines

[#1]

We’re introducing limits on custom pipeline variables to keep pipelines fast, secure, and reliable.

What are Custom pipeline variables?

Custom pipeline variables are variables you define in your pipeline YAML or provide at run time via UI/API.

• Defined in bitbucket-pipelines.yml or set at run time via UI/API.

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New limits on custom pipeline variables

Limits per pipeline run:

• Current limits: Up to 350 variables, with a maximum combined size of 512 KB.

• Future limits (in approximately 3 months): Up to 50 variables, with a maximum combined size of 10 KB.

If these limits are exceeded, pipeline creation will fail with an error indicating that the custom pipeline variable limits have been exceeded.

Note: These limits apply only to custom pipeline variables. They do not apply to repository, workspace, or deployment variables.

Happy coding!

[Peter Falck Grony]

Hi Edmund,

I am completely baffled by needing a limitation reducing it from 350 variables and 512 KB down to only 10 KB in the year 2026... If a pipeline is running a bit slower for some customer you could warn them but why wouldn't you let the customer run it anyway?

Or is the whole Bitbucket experience degraded for all customers?

If the whole Bitbucket experience is degraded for all customers I would really like a bit more in depth how that came to be - it is just a miniscule YAML file... 

Furthermore, just one month ago you annonunced that 32x step sizes runners became available in light of that this announcement is even more confusing.

BR

Peter

[Julien Saab]

I agree with other community members, this is unacceptable. Why was this limitation implemented? I'm pretty sure that most of us call pipelines between repositories and pass custom variables to them. Lowering down the limit from 350 to 50 is a very drastic change which will break a lot of pipelines.

The more I use Atlassian products the more I realize that they do the opposite of what the community actually needs. I don't want AI integrations, I just want to pass more than 50 custom variables... Is that hard?