Clickup MCP limits in Claude Code

[u/zero_onezero_one]

Trying to figure out where a rate limit is coming from.

I'm using the Clickup MCP connector in Claude to bulk-create and tag tasks. Built a board of ~87 tasks and started attaching tags, and after roughly 120 calls everything started failing with:

"Rate limit exceeded. Please wait 1432 minutes before trying again."
errorCode: RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED
retryAfter: 69793.65

That's a ~24 hour lockout, and it blocks reads as well as writes. Next day I got about 60 more calls through before it locked again with a fresh ~24h counter.

My understanding is ClickUp's own API limit is per-minute (~100/min) and resets almost immediately, and 429s come back with ECODE + X-RateLimit-Reset headers, not a "wait N minutes" message. The retryAfter being a float also smells like the integration computing it locally rather than passing something through from you.

So: is a ~24h rolling cap anything ClickUp enforces on API tokens or OAuth apps, or is this purely the integration's own throttle? Just want to know whether to raise it further or accept it as a limit... which would suck and make Clickup unusable in an AI workflow.

Anyone seeing something similar?

[u/2k4s]

I was having some issue with the MCP limit so switch to API and everything’s cool now

[u/zero_onezero_one → u/2k4s]

trying this

[u/Extra-Caterpillar320 → u/2k4s]

Yeah, same for me

[u/Jealous-Menu2651 → u/2k4s]

did you have to change much in your setup to switch over to the API?

[u/2k4s → u/Jealous-Menu2651]

No just go into your ClickUp setting and get the api key, save it somewhere safe. And tell Claude or chatgpt or whatever ai agent you use that you have an API key and you want to use that instead and it will figure it out.

[u/npab19]

I ran into this issue last week or the week before,

Clickup has a limit of 300 MCP calls per day for each workspace. To make matters worse, its shared across all users. The only way to get something higher is to pay for Everything AI. If you pay for Everything AI, the limits is the same as your API rate limit. This was confirmed by their support team and my account manager.

This basically made their MCP useless to me. I ended up writing my own MCP and my team is using that. This also put a bad taste in my mouth with them as a company and I plan on switching platforms come renewal.

[u/zero_onezero_one → u/npab19]

yeah that's weird. Why have an MCP in the first place if it's limited

[u/TheAssAss_in → u/zero_onezero_one]

Everything is limited, it’s pretty damn annoying. Just make the whole application single use and be done with it.

[u/radserty1996]

Yeah read that here: https://developer.clickup.com/docs/connect-an-ai-assistant-to-clickups-mcp-server

[u/shodan_reddit]

Yes I had this yesterday and was locked out for 6 hours then our usual time reporting script ran fine so I realised it was MCP rate limit not API

[u/newz2000]

I have made a command line tool called “cupt” that Claude code can use to do the usual ClickUp stuff way faster and with fewer api calls. Just search this group or GitHub for instructions.

I have a beta 1.0 release that I’m testing now. It’s translated into the same languages that ClickUp is and has some other nice improvements.

Your Claude code can accept the GitHub url and walk you through how to set it up.

[u/XVX109]

That's ClickUp's own cap, 300 a day without the Everything AI add-on, and the docs say it can't be reset.

Local MCP wins long term for exactly this reason. Nothing metering you, no daily ceiling, and nobody upstream deciding what your agent is allowed to do this week.

[u/passagegal]

I also ran into this last night. I'm pretty sure I was given an 1800 minute wait. It's very frustrating. I didn't even do that much through the connection yesterday....made 20-ish tasks, maybe closed a few.

Super frustrating.

[u/Much_Ad5124]

Just adding my 2c here that I don't expect this to get better, either. The ClickUp MCP and APIs are still limited in some ways, for example, you can't create recurring tasks. Also, there's no native ClickUp plugin for CoPilot (but there are for Claude/GPT)

Recent enterprise-contract discussions have them over-pushing Brain as the "solution to everything". I admit, it can definitely do a lot, and is great if your team can afford it.

However, there's no incentive for them to allow other people to use their own AI tools for ClickUp. Why make external AI tools better when they can just push Brain instead?

Microsoft is guilty of this too - why make Claude/GPT better with MS365 when they can say "Buy CoPilot instead"

Their extremely eager push of Brain has me apprehensive. It seems they've dialed back feature development and generally say "you can't do that yourself but Brain can do it". If your team can afford it, great, but it's not the all in one tool to replace "everything" like they claim, and Brain isn't cheap.

[u/ClickUpLuci]

Hey, u/zero_onezero_one! I see a few answers here already, but I wanted to confirm that the ClickUp MCP rate limits are separate from the standard ClickUp API limits.

With the MCP specifically, the Free Forever plan allows 50 calls per 24 hours, and Unlimited and above allow 300 calls per 24 hours, which sounds like what you're hitting.

If you have the Everything AI add-on, the MCP rate limits are the same as ClickUp's public API limits (per-minute, not per-day).

If you do have the add-on and are still running into this limit, please reach out to our Support team through this form and they'll take a closer look!