Active automation rule limit

30 September 2026

What changes

The plan caps the company’s active automation rules. Activating a draft or resuming a paused rule checks that cap before saving. The monthly execution budget stays separate: activation does not check it; admitting a run does.

Draft, paused and deleted rules do not count. Existing rules above the cap keep running and can be edited or paused; this limit does not pause them automatically. Pause an active rule with POST /v1/automations/rules/{rule}/pause to free a place, or upgrade the plan before trying to activate again.

Affected operations and MCP tools

These are updates to existing operations and tools. Their URLs, names, request fields and scopes remain the same.

Read both limits before activating

GET /v1/automations/usage and get_automation_usage add active_rules: {count, limit} to the usage object. count is the company’s current active, non-deleted rules. limit is the plan cap: zero permits no activations; null means no automatic ceiling. Enterprise capacity is agreed by contract. Public v1 and MCP do not expose limit_mode.

This is a response fragment. Existing monthly fields — consumed, limit, reset_at, period and threshold_percent — keep their contract:

{
  "data": {
    "active_rules": { "count": 7, "limit": 7 }
  }
}

Handle the activation rejection

At a fixed cap, count >= limit rejects activation with HTTP 402, error.type: payment_required_error and error.code: automation_active_rules_limit_exceeded. Branch on the stable code; error.message is human-facing Spanish. The error’s details.active_rules is the current count and details.limit is the cap:

{
  "error": {
    "type": "payment_required_error",
    "code": "automation_active_rules_limit_exceeded",
    "message": "Tu plan permite 7 automatizaciones activas y ya tienes 7. Pausa alguna de las activas o amplía el plan para activar esta.",
    "param": null,
    "details": { "active_rules": 7, "limit": 7 },
    "doc_url": "https://docs.factuarea.com/guides/errors#automation_active_rules_limit_exceeded",
    "request_id": "req_01HKQS5NACTIVERULECAP01"
  }
}

MCP activate_automation_rule returns JSON-RPC -32008 with message: automation_active_rules_limit_exceeded, data.code equal to that code, data.http_status: 402 and data.details: {active_rules, limit}. The app uses HTTP 422 with the same code. Invalid rule transitions retain their native error and take precedence over the cap.

Immediate retries do not free a place. Pause an active rule or upgrade, then read usage again. Rejection does not activate the rule or pause another one.

Related documentation