Strapi limit === /config/api.js

In Strapi, the pagination limit controls how many results you get back from the API.

By default, Strapi uses its own pagination settings, but you can override that in config/api.js by setting api.rest.maxLimit.

If config/api.js sets api.rest.maxLimit to 250, then limit: -1 resolves to 250.

If you send: pagination: { limit: -1 }

Strapi treats -1 as “no explicit limit”, then resolves it like this:

• if api.rest.maxLimit is a number (e.g. 100) -> limit becomes 100
• if api.rest.maxLimit is -1 (default/unlimited) -> limit stays -1 (effectively unlimited)

So in practice, limit: -1 falls back to maxLimit when maxLimit is configured.

In v4 config (config/api.js), that’s typically:

module.exports = {
  rest: {
    defaultLimit: 25,
    maxLimit: 100,
  },
};