Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, with over 2.9 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2022. With such a massive userbase, many people wonder what the limit is on how many friends or followers you can have on Facebook.
The 5,000 Friend Limit
Facebook officially limits users to 5,000 friends. This limit has been in place since Facebook’s early days as a fledgling social network back in 2009. The 5,000 friend limit applies to your main Friends list that appears on your profile.
The idea behind the limit is to keep people from indiscriminately adding huge numbers of random strangers as friends. Facebook wants to encourage more meaningful social connections between people who actually know each other offline. Having thousands of friends you’ve never actually met in real life goes against the spirit of Facebook as an online representation of your real-world social network.
Additionally, there are technical constraints that come with allowing users to have unlimited friends. The more friends someone has, the more strain it puts on Facebook’s servers and databases to store, retrieve and distribute all that social data. So the 5,000 friend cap helps manage the sheer volume of social graph data Facebook has to handle.
Getting Around the Limit
While 5,000 is the official limit, there are a few ways people can get around this restriction. One method is to create a secondary “friend list” in addition to your main Friends list. Facebook allows you to create custom Lists like “Acquaintances,” “Family,” “Close Friends,” etc. Each custom List can contain up to 5,000 people. So you could theoretically have multiple Lists with 5,000 members each, giving you way more than 5,000 total connections.
Another approach is to create a secondary Facebook profile and add 5,000 more friends there. This is against Facebook’s policies, but some people skirt the rules this way. However, managing multiple accounts can be time-consuming and goes against the idea of consolidating your social network in one place.
You can also follow public figures, companies, groups and events without being counted against your friend limit. Your follow list has no cap on it. So you could follow hundreds of thousands of public pages if you wanted to.
The Reality of 5,000 Friends
In practice, most people don’t even approach the 5,000 friend ceiling. Maintaining online connections with that many people would be incredibly difficult. According to a 2021 survey from Pew Research Center, the median (middle) number of friends for U.S. adult Facebook users is 155. Here is a breakdown of the survey findings:
| Number of Facebook Friends | Percentage of Users |
|---|---|
| Less than 50 | 27% |
| 50-149 | 20% |
| 150-499 | 28% |
| 500-999 | 13% |
| 1,000 or more | 12% |
Only one in eight Facebook users has over 1,000 friends. And very few ever reach 5,000 friends. So while the 5,000 limit seems high, it’s not an issue for the vast majority of people on the platform.
The Dunbar Number Theory
There is some interesting anthropological evidence that humans can only comfortably maintain around 150 stable social relationships at one time. This concept is called Dunbar’s number, named after British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. The Dunbar number represents the cognitive limit to how many people you can truly know well at once.
Facebook’s friend limit dwarfs the Dunbar number. But the Dunbar theory suggests most of those Facebook connections beyond 150 are likely superficial acquaintances, not close bonds. Having meaningful interactions with 5,000 people would be extremely difficult.
So while Facebook allows up to 5,000 friends, the practical reality is you’ll max out at much lower number before you get overwhelmed trying to nurture that many online relationships.
Page and Group Limits
For Facebook Pages and Groups representing businesses, organizations and public figures, the limit is much higher than personal profiles. Here are the current limits for 2023:
- Page like limit: No limit
- Page admin limit: 200
- Group member limit: 400,000
- Group admin limit: 250
So Pages can accumulate unlimited likes and followers. Groups can have up to 400,000 members, far exceeding what any individual profile can amass. These higher limits allow businesses, brands and communities to reach massive audiences through Facebook’s platforms.
Changes Over Time
When Facebook first launched in 2004, there was no friend limit at all. As the service grew rapidly through the 2000s, Facebook imposed a 5,000 friend cap in 2009 to manage its exponential growth. This 5,000 limit has remained unchanged for over a decade now.
However, Facebook did use to allow users to request an increased friend limit above 5,000 if they wanted. You could submit a request to Facebook asking for a higher limit and sometimes they would grant it. But in 2011, Facebook removed the option to request more friends.
Facebook has also fluctuated over the years on how many friend requests you can have pending at once. The current limit is 5,000 outgoing requests. Facebook has periodically lowered or increased this number as it refined its friend request systems.
Reasons for Limits
In summary, Facebook instituted friend limits for a few key reasons:
- Manage the social graph – Limiting friends makes the social graph more dense and usable
- Encourage meaningful connections – Deters users from friending strangers indiscriminately
- Control server loads – Limits strain on backend databases and infrastructure
- Monitor suspicious activity – Caps help identify bot and spam behavior
- Maintain ideal user experience – Prevents overload and clutter in the interface
Facebook believes these limits allow for optimal socializing experiences for the majority of users. The company sees no benefit to lifting the caps dramatically. A Facebook spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal: “We’ve found this number allows you to stay connected with all your close friends and family, while ensuring your experience remains high quality.”
Higher Limits Unlikely
Given the reasons outlined above, it seems unlikely Facebook will ever lift the core friend limits significantly. Dramatically increasing the friend cap would go against the company’s current approach.
However, Facebook may continue periodically tweaking limits on the margins. For example, in 2018 Facebook increased the follower limit for Pages from 5,000 to to 10,000 to help larger brands before removing the cap entirely. So incremental changes are possible but major limit hikes seem improbable based on Facebook’s strategy.
Facebook believes the current limits strike the right balance for the majority of users. And this core philosophy around friend caps has remained consistent since the 5,000 limit was instituted over a decade ago. Unless Facebook sees a compelling product reason for change, the 5,000 friend limit is likely here to stay.
Conclusion
Facebook officially limits personal profiles to 5,000 friends and has maintained this cap since 2009. The limit is intended to foster meaningful social engagement on the platform, though some users employ workarounds to connect with more people. In practice, most people have far fewer than 5,000 Facebook friends. Anthropological theories suggest humans can only actively maintain 150 stable relationships anyway. While the 5,000 number seems high, Facebook believes it strikes the right balance for the optimal user experience and sees no reason to significantly modify or remove the limit at this time.