🛑 Microsoft 365 Limitations Series : The Microsoft Teams Team Limitations That Can Surprise You - Part 1

It can be quite frustrating to face blocks and be unable to perform desired actions when using Microsoft 365 services. The causes are varied: administrator rules on your tenant, insufficient permissions, incorrect usage or understanding of the service, etc. However, the most logical explanation often lies in the limitations set by Microsoft.

I’m continuing my series on the key Microsoft 365 limitations to be aware of and assist you in understanding them better. Grasping these limitations is crucial for everyone in an organization, from regular users to IT administrators. Knowing what to expect can help you plan better, avoid disruptions, and ensure a smoother experience for all participants.

In this two‑part post, we’ll focus on the limits that apply specifically to Microsoft Teams teams—because they impact far more people than you might think, and they show up at the most inconvenient times (right when a project is scaling, a reorg happens, or a rollout accelerates).

Who should care ? (spoiler: probably you) :

• IT / Microsoft 365 / Teams administrators who design governance, manage lifecycle, and keep the service healthy at scale.

  
  

• Adoption leads and change managers who want to prevent friction and keep user experience smooth during rollout and growth.

  
  

• Teams owners and business champions (project managers, department leads, community managers, HR/Comms) who structure collaboration spaces and need them to keep working as participation grows.

  
  

• Everyday members and power users who just want to collaborate without hitting unexpected walls—and would love to know whether an issue is “policy,” “permissions,” or simply “the platform limit.”

Why it matters—depending on your role :

☝️As a team owner, knowing the limits helps you design the right team structure from day one (instead of rebuilding later), choose the right approach for onboarding large audiences, and set realistic expectations for how the workspace can scale.

☝️As an M365/Teams admin, it helps you create smarter guardrails (templates, provisioning strategy, lifecycle rules), reduce support tickets, and prevent sprawl or performance surprises as usage grows across the tenant.

☝️As a team member, it turns confusion into clarity: when something doesn’t work, you can quickly understand whether you’ve hit a product boundary versus a tenant configuration—saving time, frustration, and back‑and‑forth.

What Microsoft Teams team limitations should I be aware of to make the right design choices and avoid running into platform boundaries later ?

Microsoft TeamWhen you create a team in Microsoft Teams, you’re not just creating a workspace — you’re also choosing how open or restricted that workspace will be. In practice, Teams gives you three main team types to consider, and each one sets very different expectations around discoverability, membership, and governance.

To keep things simple, let's define this :

⭐ Public team (Microsoft Teams)

An open workspace that anyone in your organization can discover and join without needing an invitation.

Great for broad collaboration, communities of practice, and “open door” knowledge sharing.

⭐ Private team (Microsoft Teams)

A restricted workspace where membership is controlled—people join only if they’re added/approved by owners.

Best for sensitive projects, leadership groups, or any scenario where access must be tightly managed.

⭐ Org-wide team (Microsoft Teams)

A special “everyone is included” team where membership is automatically maintained as users join or leave the organization.

Built for company-wide communication spaces, with centralized ownership and predictable reach

How do they differ, and in what ways can I utilize them ?

Criteria	Public Team	Private Team	Org-Wide Team
How people join ?	People can join freely from within the organization	People must be added/approved by owners	People are automatically included based on organizational membership
Visibility / discoverability	Discoverable to everyone in the organization	Not openly discoverable to non-members; access is restricted	Intended to be the “everyone” space; membership is organization-driven
Membership maintenance	Primarily self-service: people opt in by joining	Owner-managed: members are curated and controlled	Automatically kept up to date as people join/leave the organization
Who typically creates it ?	Created by users (subject to tenant policies)	Created by users (subject to tenant policies)	Created by global administrators (not a standard end-user option)
Can members leave ?	Members can leave like a normal team experience	Members can leave like a normal team experience	Members can’t leave on their own; owners manage membership exceptions
Best for	Cross‑department collaboration, knowledge hubs, open initiatives	Confidential projects, restricted working groups, department-only workspaces	Company-wide announcements, enterprise communication spaces, org-level alignment
Governance / risk profile	Higher risk of oversharing if content isn’t curated—visibility encourages broad access	Lower risk by design—access is intentionally controlled	High-impact space: strong moderation and clear posting rules recommended due to wide reach
Operational overhead	Lower: fewer invitations to manage, more self-service onboarding	Higher: owners must manage membership and access requests	Lower for membership (automatic), but higher for communications discipline and moderation

Let's go back to limitations. Below, I will adress some of the most frequently asked questions and key limitations you should know about.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

about restrictions in Team for Microsoft Teams

---

What is the maximum team membership capacity in Microsoft Teams ?

A single Microsoft Teams team can contain up to 25,000 members, and Microsoft specifies that this count includes all users in the team (and also includes direct members brought in through shared channels). This is often confusing because Org-wide teams sound like “the biggest possible teams,” but they’re actually a special team type with a different cap and different rules..

---

How many teams can a single user create in Microsoft Teams ?

A non-admin user can create teams up to the point where they hit the “250 object” creation limit in Microsoft Teams (a limit enforced via Microsoft Entra ID objects). In practice, this is why people often refer to it as “around 250 teams per user,” and it includes teams that are active, archived, and even recently deleted—because deleted teams can remain in a soft-deleted state for a period and still count toward the quota during that time..

---

What is the maximum number of Teams a user can belong to in Microsoft Teams ?

A user can be a member of up to 1,000 teams, and Microsoft explicitly states that archived teams are included in that limit. When it comes to deleted teams, Microsoft does not explicitly say they count toward this membership limit; in practice, once a team is deleted it no longer functions as an active membership, although the underlying group can typically be restored for a period—meaning if the team is restored, it would count again. This membership limit applies regardless of whether teams are public or private.

---

What’s the maximum number of owners a Microsoft Teams team can have ?

A Microsoft Teams team can have up to 100 owners. A good rule of thumb is to aim for two to four owners per team. Try not to go below two owners, because a single-owner team is one departure away from becoming hard to manage. You can go a bit higher (for example, four to six) for large, business-critical teams where responsibilities are shared across multiple leads or time zones, but once you get into the territory of “many” owners, it often becomes counterproductive and governance becomes messy.

---

How many organization-wide (Org-wide) teams can a tenant have in Microsoft Teams ?

Microsoft Teams allows a tenant to have up to 5 org-wide teams. From a licensing and eligibility perspective, org-wide teams are not something any user can create: they’re created by Global administrators, and they’re designed for organizations that fit the org-wide model (Microsoft notes org-wide teams are limited to organizations with no more than 10,000 users).

---

What is the maximum membership capacity of an org-wide team in Microsoft Teams ?

An org-wide team in Microsoft Teams can have up to 10,000 members. Org-wide teams are designed for small-to-medium organizations, where the team automatically includes every user and keeps membership in sync as people join or leave the company—so Microsoft explicitly restricts org-wide teams to organizations with no more than 10,000 users.

---

What is the maximum number of teams a Global Administrator can create in Microsoft Teams ?

A Global Administrator can create up to 500,000 teams, but this is best understood as a tenant-wide ceiling, not a “per-admin” quota: this number represents the total capacity for the tenant rather than something each admin can independently reach on their own.

---

What is the maximum number of members you can import into a Microsoft Teams team from a distribution list, a security group, or a Microsoft 365 group ?

The maximum import size is 3,500 members when you import a distribution list, security group, or Microsoft 365 group into a team. This matters because importing is often used to speed up onboarding for large teams, but once you hit that threshold the import will fail and you’ll need a different approach (for example, splitting the source group or using another onboarding method).

---

By understanding these limitations and restrictions, you can better prepare for and manage your Microsoft Teams meetings, ensuring they are productive and efficient.

Remember, being aware of these constraints allows you to plan accordingly and make the most out of your Microsoft Teams experience.

🏁 Stay tuned for more insights in my ongoing series about Microsoft 365 limitations.

If you liked this infographic about Microsoft Teams Team limitations and think it will be useful to others as well, feel free to share it.