# What is the LinkedIn Commercial Use Limit?

Canonical page: https://depost.ai/glossary/commercial-use-limit

**Commercial Use Limit:** The Commercial Use Limit is a monthly cap LinkedIn places on how many profile searches and profile views a free account can make, applied when the activity looks like recruiting or prospecting, and reset at midnight Pacific on the first of each calendar month.

Also called: commercial use limit, CUL, LinkedIn search limit, LinkedIn profile view limit, you have reached the commercial use limit.

LinkedIn names three activities that count against it: searching for profiles on the website or the mobile app, browsing profiles through the People Also Viewed panel, and viewing member profiles on the People tab of a company Page. Reading your feed, publishing, commenting, and replying to messages do not count, which is why an account can post every day for a year and never meet this limit.

The number itself is not published. LinkedIn says it cannot display how many searches or views you have left, and that support cannot lift the limit on request. So you find out by hitting it: search stops returning results and a screen tells you it is capped until the first of next month.

This is a paywall rather than a safety mechanism. Reaching it is not a black mark against the account, and it has nothing to do with the restrictions that follow automated activity. Premium Business, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter Lite all raise it, which is the intended resolution.

It also tells you which half of LinkedIn you are working. A cap on searching and viewing is a cap on going out to find people. It does not touch posting, commenting, or replying, so a pipeline built on published work runs into a different set of constraints entirely, and this one never becomes the reason to upgrade.

## In Depost AI

Depost AI works on the side of LinkedIn this limit does not reach. It reads the analytics of the account you connected, plans and writes from what already performed, and drafts replies to the people who turn up in your own comments and inbox. Nothing in it searches or browses other people’s profiles, so nothing in it spends your monthly allowance.

## Questions people ask

### How many profile searches do you get before the Commercial Use Limit?

LinkedIn has never published the number and says it cannot show you how many you have left. It varies with how the account is used, which is the point: the limit is a judgment about whether the activity looks commercial, not a fixed counter.

### When does the Commercial Use Limit reset?

At midnight Pacific on the first day of each calendar month. It is a monthly allowance rather than a rolling window, so an account that hits it on the 20th waits out the rest of the month or upgrades.

## Read next

- [Engagement and lead intelligence](https://depost.ai/features/engagement)
- [A 5-step outreach workflow](https://depost.ai/blog/linkedin-outreach-workflow)

## Related terms

- [Connection request limit](https://depost.ai/glossary/connection-request-limit): The connection request limit is the cap LinkedIn enforces on how many invitations an account can send in a period; LinkedIn does not publish the number, and an account that reaches it is blocked from sending invitations for a period that typically lasts a week.
- [Message limit](https://depost.ai/glossary/linkedin-message-limit): LinkedIn publishes no daily cap on messages to your existing connections; what it meters is InMail, the paid message to someone you are not connected to, which is issued as monthly credits and returned when the recipient replies.
- [Social selling](https://depost.ai/glossary/social-selling): Social selling is the practice of building familiarity with potential buyers through public participation, commenting, posting, and useful replies, so that outreach lands with someone who already recognises your name.
- [Account restriction](https://depost.ai/glossary/account-restriction): An account restriction is a limit LinkedIn places on what an account can do, applied when its activity looks automated or otherwise inconsistent with the User Agreement, and ranging from a single feature refusing to work to permanent closure.

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