Bulk Operations in Intune

SOGGIA SIMONE 0 Reputation points
2026-05-15T08:31:44.08+00:00

Hi,

I am experiencing an issue with Microsoft Intune's bulk Retire action. When attempting to retire a large number of devices from our tenant, i'm receiving the following error message:

"Action limit reached – The action couldn't be completed because you have reached the daily limit on Retire. Please try again later."

I understand that Intune enforces a daily throttle on the Retire device action, however we were unable to find any official documentation specifying the exact daily limit for this action.

I have the following questions:

  1. What is the exact daily limit for the Retire device action per tenant?
  2. At what time (UTC) does the daily counter reset?
  3. Is there any way to temporarily increase this limit, given that we need to retire a large number of devices urgently?
  4. Is there an alternative approach (e.g., via Microsoft Graph API) that would allow us to bypass or work around this limitation?

Any guidance or clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Microsoft Security | Intune | Reporting
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  1. AI answer

    2026-05-15T08:32:00.36+00:00
    1. The exact numeric daily limit for the Retire device action per tenant is not documented in the provided material. Only the existence of bulk actions and the Retire action itself are described.
    2. The specific UTC time when the daily Retire counter resets is not documented in the provided material.
    3. No documented method is provided in the material to temporarily increase the daily Retire limit. The only supported mechanism described for operating at scale is the standard bulk device actions experience in the Intune admin center.
    4. The material references that the Retire action can also be invoked via Microsoft Graph API (manageddevice-retire) and that it ultimately uses the RemoteWipe CSP. However, there is no indication that using Microsoft Graph or CSP-based mechanisms bypasses or alters Intune’s throttling or daily limits. Any throttling enforced by the Intune service would still apply regardless of whether the action is initiated from the Intune admin center, bulk device actions, or Microsoft Graph.

    For retiring many devices, the documented options are:

    • Use bulk device actions in the Intune admin center:
      1. Go to Devices > All devices > Bulk device actions.
      2. On Basics, choose the OS and Retire as the device action.
      3. On Devices, select up to the supported maximum number of devices.
      4. On Review + create, select Create.
    • Use the standard per-device Retire action from Devices > All devices by selecting each device and choosing Retire.

    If the daily limit is reached, the only documented path is to wait for the service to allow additional Retire operations and, if necessary, plan the retirements in batches over multiple days. For complete removal from organizational control, additional cleanup steps may be required depending on platform (for example, removing the device from Microsoft Entra ID, or releasing Apple ADE devices from Apple Business Manager), but these do not change the Retire throttling behavior.

    References:

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