The SharePoint Online term store underpins managed metadata across your entire tenant. Understanding its capacity limits prevents taxonomy design mistakes that require expensive restructuring later.
| Limit | Value | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Terms per term set | 30,000 | Hard limit |
| Total term store items (term sets + terms) per tenant | 1,000,000 | Hard limit |
| Hierarchy depth within a term set | 7 levels | Hard limit |
| Term groups per tenant | No documented hard cap | Practical limit only |
| Languages per term (translated labels) | One label per language enabled in the term store; up to 50 languages configurable | Configuration-bound |
| Synonyms (other labels) per term per language | Multiple; no specific hard cap published by Microsoft | Best practice: under 50 |
| Content type hubs per tenant | 1 | Hard limit |
| Site-local term sets (site collection scoped) | Supported; terms count toward the 1,000,000 tenant total | Counted in tenant limit |
Term Set and Total Capacity
The 30,000-terms-per-set limit
Each term set in the SharePoint Online term store can contain a maximum of 30,000 terms counted across all levels of the hierarchy within that set. For the vast majority of taxonomy designs this limit is far above what is practically needed. It becomes a real constraint when organisations use a single flat term set to model large reference datasets: product catalogues with thousands of SKUs, location hierarchies covering hundreds of cities and sub-regions, or classification codes bulk-imported from a legacy system.
If a term set is approaching capacity, partition it. A single term group can hold multiple term sets, so large flat taxonomies can be divided by region, category type, or another natural boundary without changing the managed metadata columns that reference them. Columns can be scoped to a specific term set or to the entire group, giving you flexibility when reorganising an oversized set.
The 1,000,000-item tenant limit
Microsoft's SharePoint Online service description places the combined ceiling for term sets and individual terms at 1,000,000 items across the entire tenant term store. For most organisations this is not a concern in normal operation. It becomes relevant when automated processes create terms programmatically (for example, nightly imports from an ERP system), when legacy migrations bulk-load large taxonomies, or when many independent business units have each maintained their own term groups over several years without governance.
There is no single-click total in the SharePoint admin centre. To check current term store size, use PnP PowerShell: Get-PnPTermGroup returns all term groups, and iterating with Get-PnPTermSet and Get-PnPTerm provides per-set counts. Build this check into your periodic tenant health review.
Hierarchy and Structure
A term set supports a maximum of 7 levels of nesting. In practice, most well-designed taxonomies use 3 to 4 levels at most. Nesting beyond 5 levels degrades the user experience in the managed metadata column picker, where users must expand each level to reach a selectable leaf term. Deep hierarchies are often a sign that the taxonomy has been used to model data relationships that would be better served by a separate list or a lookup column.
Term groups are organisational containers with no documented hard capacity cap. A tenant with dozens of business units each owning their own term group is well within normal operation. The binding constraints are always at the term set and total-item level, not at the group level. Keep term group ownership aligned to a real business boundary so that governance responsibilities are clear when terms need to be retired or restructured.
Deprecation vs Deletion
Deleting a term that is still assigned to list items causes those items to display a broken value in the managed metadata column. SharePoint Online does not automatically clear or remap references when a term is removed. The recommended approach is deprecation: a deprecated term is no longer available for selection in new or edited items but continues to display correctly on items that already hold the value.
Use term deletion only when you are certain no list item, document, or content type references the term. PnP PowerShell can query for items referencing a specific term before you proceed. For large-scale taxonomy restructuring where you want to update all existing references before retiring a term, Replace Master supports bulk metadata updates across libraries and lists, which can clear references programmatically before the deprecated term is finally removed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many terms can a SharePoint term set hold?
A single SharePoint Online term set supports a maximum of 30,000 terms counted across all levels of the hierarchy within that set. This is a hard platform limit.
Can I delete a term that is still assigned to list items?
Technically yes, but items already tagged with that term will show a broken or unresolved value in the managed metadata column. The safe approach is to deprecate the term instead. Deprecated terms stay visible on existing items but are no longer offered as options when creating or editing entries.
What is the total capacity of the SharePoint Online term store?
Microsoft's SharePoint Online service description sets the combined limit for term sets and individual terms at 1,000,000 items per tenant. Organisations that automate term creation or perform large taxonomy imports should track their total against this ceiling.
How deep can a SharePoint term set hierarchy go?
SharePoint Online supports a maximum of 7 levels of nesting within a term set. Practical usability degrades significantly beyond 4 or 5 levels; deep hierarchies are often a signal to reconsider the taxonomy model rather than keep nesting.