Live Mode: Safe Practices

Live mode talks to LinkedIn directly and synchronously for each call. Unlike async or schedule, Edges does not apply the same built-in pacing, batching, or orchestration on your behalf. At scale, careless live usage can look like automation and trigger throttling, checkpoints, or account risk. Goal: mimic human-like usage—similar in spirit to what Edges does in async—by spacing work, avoiding parallelism, and adding randomness.

Using live mode unsafely puts your account at serious risk—you may be temporarily rate limited or even banned from LinkedIn. Having your account blocked due to unsafe usage is not a possibility, it’s only a matter of time.

Treat live mode as your responsibility to rate-limit and sequence. If you need guardrails by default, prefer async or schedule.

Rules of thumb 👍

Spread actions over time — never fire everything at once.
Invitations — respect a daily cap and space each attempt by tens of seconds to minutes, with randomized gaps.
Profile visits — distribute across the day; delay between each live call.
Search / pagination — always wait between each page (each follow-up request using X-Pagination-Next or the next cursor).
No parallel live calls for the same identity on risky outreach—keep the pipeline sequential (one in flight, then the next).
Random + jitter — add variability to every delay so intervals are not perfectly periodic.

Cold Account

A cold account is one with little recent LinkedIn activity: new identity, long idle period, or a profile that rarely browses, searches, or messages. LinkedIn’s systems weigh sudden spikes more heavily than steady habits—going from near-zero to high-volume live API traffic in a day is one of the riskiest patterns. Ramp up over several days instead of jumping to your target throughput immediately:

Days 1–2 — Keep volume very low (a handful of benign actions if you must: light reads, spaced visits, minimal outreach). Use generous gaps between calls—often longer than the suggested minimum spacing table—and no parallelism for the same identity.
Days 3–5 — Gradually increase daily call count and breadth (more pages, more profiles), still with jitter and sequential execution. If you see 429, checkpoints, or unusual friction, slow down and extend the ramp.
After ~a week of stable, human-like patterns — You can approach your intended steady-state spacing and volume, still respecting daily caps, invitation limits, and the Rules of thumb guidance above.

There is no single “correct” curve: align ramp length with how warm the account already is and how aggressive your actions are (visits vs. InMail vs. connect). When in doubt, stretch the ramp and favor async or schedule until the account has a believable baseline of activity.

Suggested minimum spacing (live)

These are starting points for time between successive live calls of the same type for the same identity. Adjust per account and monitoring; when in doubt, ~60 s is a reasonable default.

Action	Recommended gap between calls
`linkedin-inmail-profile`	~30 s
`linkedin-message-profile`	~60 s
`linkedin-visit-profile`	~30 s
`linkedin-connect-profile`	~60 s (avoid bursts; small batches spaced apart)
`salesnavigator-inmail-profile`	~30 s
General (other live actions)	~60 s

Combine these delays with jitter (see example below), not fixed sleep only.

Simple Safe pattern: sleep + jitter (JavaScript)

After each live POST completes, wait base delay + random jitter before the next call:

const sleep = (ms) => new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, ms));

/** baseMs = minimum gap; adds 0..jitterMaxMs random extra */
async function waitBetweenLiveCalls(baseMs, jitterMaxMs = 15_000) {
  const jitter = Math.floor(Math.random() * (jitterMaxMs + 1));
  await sleep(baseMs + jitter);
}

// Example: linkedin-visit-profile — ~30s base, up to +15s jitter
await fetch("https://api.edges.run/v1/actions/linkedin-visit-profile/run/live", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "X-API-Key": process.env.EDGES_API_KEY,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({ /* inputs, identity_mode, … */ }),
});
await waitBetweenLiveCalls(30_000);
// next live call…

For pagination, call waitBetweenLiveCalls with a minimum timeframe after every page (after each response before following X-Pagination-Next).

LinkedIn Commercial Limits

Keep in mind that LinkedIn has multiple mechanisms in place to detect and flag activity that doesn’t appear human. These safeguards are why we enforce daily limits on async and scheduled runs—to ensure security and reduce the risk of triggering LinkedIn’s automated protections.

A single limit may be consumed by multiple actions. Use the Get Identity Limits endpoint to see all limits that apply to a specific action.

Identity Ramp-Up

When a LinkedIn identity is newly connected, its effective capacity ramps up gradually instead of starting at the full quotas in the limits table. Ramp-up applies to all limits tied to that identity (connection requests, visits, messages, searches, etc.). The full capacity is the value shown in the quotas table for that identity’s account level.

5-day ramp-up

Full capacity is split into 5 equal steps. Each day after the identity is connected, one additional fifth is unlocked:

Day after connection	Share of full capacity	Example: connection requests (full = 25 / 24 h)
Day 1	1/5 (20%)	5
Day 2	2/5 (40%)	10
Day 3	3/5 (60%)	15
Day 4	4/5 (80%)	20
Day 5+	5/5 (100%)	25

At the end of day 5, the identity reaches full capacity for all limits.

Identity rate limits (all actions combined)

These caps apply to the identity as a whole, not per action. All actions executed by the same identity share these windows — they are global throughput limits on total activity.

Window	Default cap (identity-wide)
Per second	5
Per minute	50
Per 15 minutes	500
Per 4 hours	2,500
Per 24 hours	15,000

Action rate limits

Each limit defines how many times a specific type of action can be executed within a defined time window.

Limit ↔ Actions & Quotas

Some limits vary depending on the account level: default, CLASSIC, or SALES_NAV.

Most quotas use a 24-hour sliding window, meaning they reset every 24 hours. InMail uses ~31 days .

Limit Name	Value LinkedIn/Sales Navigator	Per-minute cap
Max profile visits	default & CLASSIC: 80 / 24 h · SALES_NAV: 500 / 24 h	10
Max messages sent	default, CLASSIC & SALES_NAV: 250 / 24 h	10
Max connection requests	default: 25 / 24 h · CLASSIC & SALES_NAV: 30 / 24 h	10 (default & CLASSIC only)
Max profile enrichments	CLASSIC: 700 / SALES_NAV: 700 / 24 h	5
Max company enrichments	CLASSIC: 2000 / SALES_NAV: 2000 / 24 h	20
Max job enrichments	CLASSIC: 5000 / SALES_NAV: 5000 / 24 h	10
Max profile components	450 / 24 h (experiences, educations, skills)	9
Max contact info	default, CLASSIC & SALES_NAV: 250 / 24 h	—
Max event invitations sent	100 / 24 h	20
Max linkedin search people	default & SALES_NAV: 450 / 24 h	10
Max salesnavigator search people	default & SALES_NAV: 950 / 24 h	20
Max linkedin search company	default & SALES_NAV: 450 / 24 h	10
Max salesnavigator search company	default & SALES_NAV: 950 / 24 h	20
Max search saved people	default & SALES_NAV: 5,000 / 24 h	20
Max search saved company	default & SALES_NAV: 5,000 / 24 h	20
Max InMail sent	default: 5 / ~31 d · CLASSIC: 15 / ~31 d · SALES_NAV: 50 / ~31 d	10
Max get post	10,000 / 24 h	40
Max get post commenters	10,000 / 24 h	40
Max get post likers	10,000 / 24 h	40
Max get post reposters	10,000 / 24 h	40
Max get people post activity	10,000 / 24 h	30
Max get people comment activity	10,000 / 24 h	30
Max get people reaction activity	10,000 / 24 h	30
Max Extract profile handle and id	10,000 / 24 h	30
Max get people reaction activity	10,000 / 24 h	30

Important Operational Notes

New identities ramp up to full capacity over 5 days and, on day 1, over the first 5 hours (see New identity ramp-up).
Limits are rolling windows, not calendar-based.
Per-minute caps apply even if the daily quota is not exhausted.
Some actions consume multiple limits simultaneously (e.g., visit + enrichment).
Sales Navigator accounts have significantly higher visit/search quotas.
InMail limit works on a ~31-day window, not daily.
Default identity rate limits (above) are shared across all actions on the same identity. Per-action quotas in the limits table below (limit_value per limit type) apply separately in addition to those global caps.

Execution modes overview — when to prefer live vs async vs schedule
Pagination — live mode and X-Pagination-Next
Rate limits
LinkedIn limits

Getting Started

Essentials

Build with Edges

Live Mode: Safe Practices

Rules of thumb 👍

Cold Account

Suggested minimum spacing (live)

Simple Safe pattern: sleep + jitter (JavaScript)

LinkedIn Commercial Limits

Identity Ramp-Up

5-day ramp-up

Identity rate limits (all actions combined)

Action rate limits

Limit ↔ Actions & Quotas

Important Operational Notes

​Rules of thumb 👍

​Cold Account

​Suggested minimum spacing (live)

​Simple Safe pattern: sleep + jitter (JavaScript)

​LinkedIn Commercial Limits

​Identity Ramp-Up

​5-day ramp-up

​Identity rate limits (all actions combined)

​Action rate limits

​Limit ↔ Actions & Quotas

​Important Operational Notes

​Related

Rules of thumb 👍

Cold Account

Suggested minimum spacing (live)

Simple Safe pattern: sleep + jitter (JavaScript)

LinkedIn Commercial Limits

Identity Ramp-Up

5-day ramp-up

Identity rate limits (all actions combined)

Action rate limits

Limit ↔ Actions & Quotas

Important Operational Notes

Related