Cannot create contacts due to OBJECT_CREATION limit

Hi all,
I create HubSpot contacts through the API as part of a signup flow. Recently, when attempting to create a contact in our dev environment (which is connected to a HubSpot Enterprise account sandbox) I received a 402 status code and this error message in response:

{
 "message": "Portal XXXXXXXX has exceeded its OBJECT_CREATION contact 
 limit of 100001",
 "errorType": "LimitExceededException",
 "errorTokens": {
 "portalId": ["XXXXXXXX"],
 "limit": ["100001"],
 "type": ["OBJECT_CREATION"],
 "resourceType": ["contact"]
 },
 "correlationId": "7ca94ed9-c9d5-4f07-b3f6-507ff81beb2f"
}

I found this community post from 2020 from someone who had the same issue: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/APIs-Integrations/Can-t-batch-update-create-contacts-nor-create-a-single-contact/m-p/382863
Unfortunately, while the answer confirmed the user had reached the object creation limit, there was no suggestion of the next steps or input on where they could find more information to resolve this issue and continue creating contacts.
The ability to create contacts in HubSpot through the API is critical to business and I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction to resolving this issue. Thanks!

HubSpot sandboxes have a limit of 100K contacts which it looks like you’ve reached. If it’s just dev, it sounds like you need to delete contacts to continue testing in dev. I’d contact your CSM for more info if you need additional sandboxes. But again, if it’s just test dummy data, just delete some records.

Hi Lee, thanks for the quick response and for pointing me toward the sandbox limit. When creating the sandbox, I created over 300,000 contact records in the sandbox via a Salesforce sync. I’m not sure how this would have been possible (or why I was able to continue creating records for a period of time afterward) with the 100K limit––any ideas?
In an attempt to resolve the issue, I deleted the contact records currently in the sandbox. I have a much smaller list of contacts to import, so we will be far below the contact limit. However, I’m still seeing a large number of records listed below the Contacts heading. This number seems to be going down slowly, is this just a delayed update while the records are being deleted?

Thank you!

I’d assume so. Some counts like contacts in a list, is from a separate indexed value than the actual list of contacts. I’d assume that contacts count is similar. Background processes and such handling things until it gets the exact count. I don’t know that for sure in that context, but that is how it works with lists.

I did just have to wait until it had completed processing the deletion; it looks like I’m back in business and creating contacts again. Thank you for your help!