It is often claimed that LinkedIn allows you to send only 3.000 connection requests. However, this is not true. This article covers common myths and real facts about LinkedIn invitation limits as well as best practices that help to avoid the restrictions.

LinkedIn considers sending too many connection requests as an indication of the commercial use of the platform which it tries to limit. LinkedIn doesn’t provide detailed information about the maximal number of invitations though. Our team helps our customers to automate LinkedIn outreach with InTouch Tool (opens new window) for many years, so we collected lots of practical information about real LinkedIn limitations which we are going to share in this article. LinkedIn changes its limits from time to time but since we are always working in the fields, we keep the information up to date.

The true facts about LinkedIn invitations limit

The most important lesson that we’ve learned is that the invitation limit exists but it is flexible. The commonly mentioned limit of 3.000 connection requests is not true. In fact, many of our clients send over 10.000 invitations in their campaigns and don’t face any restrictions.

The real limit of invitations depends on multiple factors and the key factor is how many of your invitations were marked as “I don’t know” by recipients. In order to decrease the number of “I don’t know” responses, we recommend sending highly personalized invitations and avoiding trying to sell anything to people in the first message.

Another factor that might lead to invitation restrictions on LinkedIn is sending too many connection requests in a short time period. This is especially important if you use automation software to expand your LinkedIn network, so make sure that your automation tool is able to simulate manual work. For instance, InTouch Tool (opens new window) has in-build AI-based algorithms that are indistinguishable from sending invitations and messages manually.

The last common misconception is that withdrawing connection requests that were not accepted will increase your invitation limit. Withdrawing invitations might be reasonable in some cases, for instance, if you have more than 1000 pending invites. However, all of your sent invitations are counted towards your connection requests limit, no matter if you decided to withdraw them or not. By the way, withdrawing invitations won’t reduce the restriction time if you already reached the limit of connection requests.

How to avoid LinkedIn connection requests limit

Summarizing the facts above, here are the best practices that we typically recommend to our customers who want to use LinkedIn for lead generation and other purposes:

• Send highly relevant and personalized invitations to people. Don’t send connection requests without a message. Use LinkedIn filters to divide your target audience into smaller segments, then write a specific connection request to each of the segments.
• Don’t try to sell anything in the connection request message. Use the invitation message to explain why you’d like to connect and, ideally, how they can benefit from connecting with you. If people suspect that you only want to sell something to them, they are very likely to mark your invitation as spam which might lead to setting temporal restrictions to your LinkedIn profile.
• Fill your profile with relevant information. Most people view your profile before deciding whether to accept your invitation. If your profile says "I'm selling shit left and right", your prospects would likely consider that as your reason for connecting no matter what you put in your invitation message.
• Increase the number of invitations gradually. Don’t start sending hundreds of connection requests immediately. We typically recommend starting with tens of invitations per day, pay attention to your connection rate, and experiment with the invitation message. Once you’ve found what message works for your target audience, you can gradually increase your daily amount of invitations to your target values.
• If you heavily use LinkedIn for lead generation or recruiting, consider buying Sales Navigator or another LinkedIn premium account. LinkedIn has much more tolerant limitations for paid users.

What to do if you are restricted from sending invitations on LinkedIn

As discussed above, LinkedIn might restrict you from sending further connection requests if too many of your invitations are marked as spam or sent in a very short period of time. Sometimes you will have to enter a captcha or an email of the person that you want to invite to verify that you know them. The good news is that the restrictions are usually temporal. The exact time period of restrictions depends on the specific restriction reason and the usage history of your LinkedIn account.

Most often, all restrictions are removed within 24 hours to one week. However, if you’ve already received multiple warnings from LinkedIn and too many of your invitations were marked as spam, the restrictions period might be longer.

Contacting LinkedIn customer support might sometimes help to remove the restrictions. Note that if you have a free LinkedIn account, getting a reply from LinkedIn support usually requires some time.

Feel free to share your thoughts and experience with the LinkedIn invitation limit at support@intouchtool.com! We are always happy to discuss this topic.