Did you know that there are limitations to how many people you can follow on TikTok?
If you try to follow people too quickly, TikTok will stop you (claiming you’re following people too fast), and tell you to do slow down. Likewise, if you try to follow too many accounts in total, TikTok won’t let you.
But what exactly are these limits, and is there any way to push past them?
In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about follow limits on TikTok.
How Many TikTok Accounts Can You Follow In Total?
It appears that TikTok has a hard limit for all TikTok users, allowing you to follow no more than 10,000 accounts in total.
This number seems entirely reasonable, and falls in line with other social networks. Facebook for example allows you to have up to 5,000 friends, and Instagram only lets you follow 7,500 people as well.
If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense.
The average person only really knows around 600 people. While obviously it’s possible that you’d want to see content from more than 600, TikTok’s follow limit of 10,000 is entirely reasonable.
There’s no way you could possibly remember 10,000 different content creators. And even at an average TikTok length of 15 seconds, it would take you over 41 hours just to watch a single video from each person.
There is just simply no practical reason to follow more than 10,000 accounts.
TikTok has likely implemented this limit to prevent spammers and marketers from following tens of thousands of people, hoping to receive follows back.
Although this is still common practice to a degree, TikTok also limits following based on time, which we’ll discuss now.
How Many TikTok Accounts Can You Follow Per Day? Per Hour?
Have you ever followed a bunch of TikTok accounts quickly, only to be greeted with the following message?
“You’re following too fast.”
Or, “You’re tapping too fast. Take a break!”
This is because TikTok limits the rate in which you can follow new accounts, in order to prevent spamming and other malicious activity.
But what are these limits?
A general rule of thumb is that you can follow around 25 to 30 accounts per hour, and no more than 200 accounts per day.
If you attempt to follow people faster than this, you will get a message notifying you that you’re following too fast, and the follow won’t actually go through.
Note however that there don’t seem to be clearly defined limits. It seems that TikTok handles this on account-by-account basis.
For example, legitimate accounts that have been around for a long time may have limits that are a bit more lenient.
TikTok implements follow limits to prevent spamming and other bad behavior. Because spammers know that they’ll get banned quickly, they may try to follow as many people as they can before they are caught – hence the need to be more restrictive with them.
New accounts haven’t yet proven their trust in TikTok’s eyes, which is why their limits may be a bit harsher.
How Long Until The ‘You’re Following Too Fast’ Message Goes Away?
Typically, any error messages indicating you’re following TikTok accounts too quickly should go away within a few hours.
However, the exact time may be specific to your account as well.
If you have a habit of triggering this error message often, TikTok may restrict your account for longer.
Additionally, if you start following people immediately after you’re allowed to again, they may block you more quickly – and for a longer period of time.
Does Following A Bunch Of People Trigger Shadowbans?
TikTok has not spoken officially about this, but it would appear that it actually can!
This is because shadowbans are often caused by spammy behavior.
TikTok wants to ensure that people aren’t trying to ‘game the system’ so to speak – they want accounts that are legitimately interesting and high quality to get the attention that they deserve.
Trying to artificially boost your own follower count by following other people may be seen as spammy behavior, which may lead to temporary shadowbans.
Note: Spam liking can also lead to shadowbans!
How To Push Pass TikTok Follow Limits
Lets say you want to follow more people once you’ve reached 10,000 accounts, or you want to follow more people per hour. Is there anything you can do?
Unfortunately, not a whole lot. Although you could make a second TikTok account to follow an additional 10,000, this is far from an ideal solution.
However, with that many accounts on your following list, there’s bound to be some that are no longer active.
Whether they’ve not posted in a long time or the accounts have been banned for community guideline violations, TikTok will keep them on your following list until you remove them.
Therefore, you could go through your list and clear these out to free up some additional space. Although their account will still be there, their profile picture will be gone.
Fortunately, this makes them easy to recognize!
Follow / Unfollow On TikTok – Good Or Bad?
One of the most common reasons people follow a large number of TikTok accounts, is because they’re partaking in a TikTok growth strategy called Follow / Unfollow.
The premise of this strategy is that you follow a bunch of people who are interested in the type of content that you put out, and hope that a good percentage of them will notice you and follow you back.
Some people even take this a step further, investing in bots and other tools to do this automatically.
Although follow / unfollow can work to a certain degree, it is a strategy best avoided.
Why?
First of all, it goes against TikTok’s community guidelines and can lead to shadowbans and account suspensions. As mentioned earlier, TikTok wants to avoid any spammy behavior or attempts to cheat the algorithm.
Secondly, the types of followers that you’d attract aren’t really people that you want following you anyway.
Many people follow back just to be nice, not because they’re actually interested in your content.
The problem arises when you think about how the TikTok algorithm works. If you post a video and not even your own followers are watching it, it sends a bunch of negative signals back to TikTok. This limits further exposure to new people via the For You page.
Ultimately, real organic growth on TikTok is what will set you up for long-term success – not spammy tactics simply to boost your follower count.
Conclusion
TikTok does indeed have follow limits, and all accounts have to abide by them.
At this time, you can follow no more than 200 accounts per day, and no more than 10,000 accounts in total.
Thankfully, these limits are entirely reasonable, and most people will never surpass them.
Do you have any questions? Is there anything I can help with? Feel free to share using the comment form below.
Thank you for reading,
– James McAllister