The Full List of Limits That Matter
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Name the most commonly hit governor limits and their approximate values
- Distinguish per-transaction limits from platform-wide limits
- Use this lesson as a reference rather than something to memorize exactly
Prerequisites: "Why Governor Limits Exist"
The limits that matter most day to day
| Limit | Value (synchronous Apex) |
|---|---|
| SOQL queries per transaction | 100 |
| DML statements per transaction | 150 |
| Records processed per DML statement | 10,000 |
| SOSL searches per transaction | 20 (Module 21) |
| CPU time | 10 seconds |
| Heap size | 6 MB |
These are the limits that actually surface in real Apex development — not an exhaustive list of every number Salesforce enforces, but the ones worth having a rough sense of.
Per-transaction, not per-org
Every limit above resets at the start of each new transaction — a transaction that ran 90 SOQL queries doesn't "use up" any of the next transaction's 100-query budget. This distinction matters: the limit is about how much work happens in one continuous unit of execution (Module 19's transaction concept), not a lifetime cap on the org as a whole.
A reference, not a memorization exercise
Nobody writing real Apex memorizes "exactly 100 SOQL queries" and counts precisely as they go — the actual skill (covered across the rest of this module) is writing code that structurally avoids ever getting close to these numbers in the first place, mostly through bulkification. This table exists to look back on, the same way Module 13's keyword tour did.
Exercise
As a comment, name the two limits most directly caused by SOQL or DML running inside a loop.
Show hint
Think about which two limits a loop with 200 iterations would blow past first.
The Full List of Limits That Matter Quiz
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Summary
This lesson is a reference: the handful of governor limits that actually come up in everyday Apex work, gathered in one place.