Working and collaborating remotely has never been this easy and Zoom has made sure of that. The service offers free and paid plans with support for hosting hundreds of users at once and features options like raising a hand, ending meetings for everyone, muting all participants, saving chats on the cloud, and more.

But like any other service that’s available online, there are a few limitations when using Zoom, be it for a free user or a paid subscriber. In the following post, we will discuss the several limits that you might come across when using the US-based video-conferencing solution.

Related: How to blur your background on Zoom

What is Zoom?

Zoom is a remote collaborative tool that lets you talk to colleagues, friends, and family online using audio or video calling. You can conduct one-on-one meetings, group video conferences, share content from your screen, change backgrounds, and record sessions directly from the service’s app, desktop, or web client.

Unlike its competitors, Zoom offers apps on both Windows and Mac and integration with other services like Google Drive, Google Calendar, Facebook Workplace, Skype for Business, and Microsoft Outlook. The collaboration tool hosts free as well as paid plans offering different sets of advantages for every kind of customer.

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Zoom Participants limit

When using a free plan on Zoom, you can conduct meetings with up to 100 participants per meeting. However, paid users will be able to create larger meetings with more participants. The highest number of participants can be invited when a host has subscribed to a Zoom Enterprise plan and this plan permits as much as 1000 participants per meeting.

The service also allows an opt-in add-on plan where even Pro users can create meetings with 500 or 1000 participants. Here’s a full list of maximum default participants limit that you should know when using Zoom:

Plan Maximum number of participants
Zoom Basic 100
Zoom Pro 100
Zoom Business 300
Zoom Enterprise 500
Zoom Enterprise Plus 1000

Zoom Call Duration limit

Once you select a free account on Zoom, you can access an unlimited number of meetings but the meeting duration will be capped at 40 minutes for every session. Paid users can, however, conduct meetings for as long as 30 hours.

Plan Time limit per session on Zoom
Zoom Basic 40 minutes
Zoom Pro, Business, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus 30 hours

Zoom Time limit workaround for Free (Basic) plan

As mentioned above, Zoom restricts continuous usage of its video conferencing solution beyond 40 minutes, if you’re a free (Zoom Basic) user. Unless you’re willing to pay for a Pro, Business, or Enterprise plan, there’s no official way to extend your 40-minute session.

However, there’s a simple workaround that will allow you to bypass Zoom’s 40-minute cutoff. You can do so by leaving the meeting as a host and asking your participants to join the meeting again using the joining link. You can read a detailed guide from below:

How to bypass Zoom’s 40-minute limit

Zoom Webinar limit

In addition to meetings, Zoom also offers an easy way to conduct remote events with up to 50,000 viewers per host so that organizations can each their employees and clients more effectively. Depending on how you configure it, you can select your Webinar attendees limit to 100, 500, 1000, 3000, 5000, or 10000 per host. If you need even more headroom — up to 50,000 — you can get in touch with Zoom’s sales team and get the limit extended for additional charges.

Zoom Webinar Feature Feature limit
Number of view-only attendees per host 100, 500, 1000, 3000, 5000, 10000, or up to 50000 (through sales team)
Maximum number of video panelists per session 100
Maximum number of webinars that can be created per day 100 per user

Related: How to put people in breakout rooms on Zoom

Zoom Cloud recording limit

All Zoom paid subscribers can record a meeting and save it to the cloud. Cloud recording saves the video, audio, and chat text that is recorded during a Zoom meeting. The following is a list of maximum limits that should be considered when using cloud recording on Zoom:

Zoom feature Cloud recording storage capacity per user
Zoom Pro 1 GB
Zoom Business 1 GB
Zoom Enterprise Unlimited
Zoom Enterprise + Unlimited
Zoom Education 0.5 GB
Zoom Rooms 1 GB

Zoom Gallery View limit

The Gallery View mode on Zoom lets you see as many participants as possible on a screen in a grid pattern. On a PC, you can view up to 49 participants at a given time while Android/iOS users can see only 4 people on their screens.

Platform Maximum number of participants in Gallery View
Windows/macOS 49
Android/iOS 4
iPad 9
Zoom Rooms 25

Zoom Breakout rooms limit

Zoom allows you to split your group meeting into sub-group meetings using the Breakout rooms feature. When using Breakout rooms, a host will be able to move participants of a single meeting to separate sessions. You can create up to 50 breakout rooms on Zoom with a maximum of 500 participants per room (but not when selecting 50 breakout rooms).

Number of Zoom breakout rooms Maximum number of participants assigned to a breakout room
20 500
30 400
50 200

Did this post help you understand the limits that are involved when using Zoom for remote collaboration? Feel free to reach out in the comments below for further queries.

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