Purview legal hold limits clarification

Hi Priyanka Arya,
The public Purview quotas doc calls out a default limit of 10,000 legal holds per tenant, but it doesn’t explicitly say whether deactivated (enabled = False) holds still count toward that limit. In our experience:

• Active holds (enabled = True) obviously count against your 10,000-hold quota.

• Disabled or deactivated holds often continue consuming quota until you fully delete them.

Because the docs don’t spell this out, I’d recommend:

1. Run the Security & Compliance PowerShell cmdlet Get-ComplianceCaseHoldPolicy and check the Enabled flag for each hold to see exactly which ones are still counted.
2. If space is tight, delete holds you no longer need instead of just disabling them—this will free up your quota.
3. If you truly need more than 10,000 holds (active + inactive), open a Purview quota increase request via support.

Reference Link:

Microsoft Purview quotas – how to view and request increases:
Hope this helps. If you have any follow-up questions, please let me know. I would be happy to help.

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The 10,000 limit is for the total number of hold policies in the organization, regardless of whether individual holds are currently active or not. The documentation does not distinguish between enabled and disabled holds for this limit, so deactivated (enabled: False) holds still count toward the 10,000-policy maximum until they are removed.

References:

• Limits in eDiscovery
• Limits for retention policies and retention label policies
• Exchange Online limits