How many files can a shared hosting directory hold?
The number of files per directory you can use depends on the type of hosting you have:
| Type | Max. Files per Directory1 |
|---|---|
| Web & Classic | 1,024 files/inodes2 |
| cPanel, Plesk, Managed WordPress | No limit3 |
These limits prevents customers' file structures from taxing the server's resources and negatively affect its load time.
If you exceed your account's limit, you might receive an "Out of Disk Space" when trying to add or create more files in that directory. This doesn't mean that your entire hosting account has exceeded its disk space, only that directory has.
You can avoid this issue by splitting directories with many files/inodes into sub-directories, and by pruning any 'cache' or 'thumbnail' directories your site uses manually or with a cron job. We will warn customers exceeding this limit and may relocate files to maintain server performance.
1 Your entire hosting account cannot hold more than 500,000 files and folders (Windows) or 250,000 inodes (Linux).
2 File name lengths between 1 and 16 characters count as 1 inode, 17 and 32 characters count as 2, 33 and 48 characters count as 3, and so on. The longer your filenames, the fewer files you can have in a directory.
3 Though we impose no limit, to improve your website's performance, we recommend limiting your directories to no more than 1,024 files/inodes. cPanel accounts also cannot exceed their account's total inode (file) limit (more info).