How to Limit Renovate PR Volume With Rate Limits

prConcurrentLimit caps how many Renovate PRs are open at once and prHourlyLimit caps how many it creates per hour, throttling both review load and CI minutes.

Set prConcurrentLimit, prHourlyLimit, and optionally branchConcurrentLimit in renovate.json. Updates over the limit wait in the dependency dashboard queue until slots free up.

Steps

• Set prConcurrentLimit to cap simultaneously open PRs (0 means unlimited).
• Set prHourlyLimit to cap creations per hour.
• Queued updates surface in the dependency dashboard.

Config

{
  "extends": ["config:recommended"],
  "prConcurrentLimit": 5,
  "prHourlyLimit": 2,
  "branchConcurrentLimit": 10
}

Gotchas

• A value of 0 disables the limit rather than blocking all PRs.
• Lower limits reduce CI spend but slow how fast updates land; tune to your team throughput.
• Queued updates are visible and force-startable from the dependency dashboard.

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