The 5Mb project.json limit should be increased

235x

skyistumbling wrote:
Give us 50mb limit already, or actually just take away any limits entirely

We shouldn't take away limits fully, if we do there should be a warning or indicator of the project's size, or simply a check to see if you would be able to fit the project in your PC's RAM

Actually there should be a warning even if this suggestion is rejected.

jmdzti_0-0

julmik6478 wrote:
Possible that electramod has another limit.

electramod servers are dead atm

fatman280

scratchfan321 wrote:
Image

Within sb3 files, there are assets (png and svg images, wav or mp3 sounds) and a project.json file containing all of the project's sprite names, code data, list / variable data etc. If an sb3 file is opened through zip decompression, all of these files can be seen. If the project.json is over 5Mb in size, it cannot be uploaded to the scratch website but it can be saved locally.

I think that the current limit of 5Mb in size for the project.json is far too low since the assets have an individual size limit of 10Mb which is much larger.

I have developed two very large projects which have both reached the 5Mb project.json limit. I also occasionally find other projects on the website which have reached the 5Mb project.json limit.

Projects that reach the 5Mb json limit also become difficult to remix / modify by other users since they will be unable to upload remixes because a small number of new features will bring the json size too high and their remix can't be saved or shared. Additionally, users are forced to make the code harder to read in order to minimise its overall size which makes it harder for others to read what the code does and learn from it.

Since large assets of 10Mb in size have a much more significant impact on overall project sb3 size, I think that increasing the project.json limit from 5Mb to something like 10Mb or 15Mb would have very little negative impact on the platform as a whole and will have a very positive overall impact from the larger projects people will be able to create and share.

screw the project max size, it stopped me.

bubgamer072

me in a dupe of this topic wrote:
i think 10mb for scratchers would be nice

fatman280

scratchfan321 wrote:
Image

Within sb3 files, there are assets (png and svg images, wav or mp3 sounds) and a project.json file containing all of the project's sprite names, code data, list / variable data etc. If an sb3 file is opened through zip decompression, all of these files can be seen. If the project.json is over 5Mb in size, it cannot be uploaded to the scratch website but it can be saved locally.

I think that the current limit of 5Mb in size for the project.json is far too low since the assets have an individual size limit of 10Mb which is much larger.

I have developed two very large projects which have both reached the 5Mb project.json limit. I also occasionally find other projects on the website which have reached the 5Mb project.json limit.

Projects that reach the 5Mb json limit also become difficult to remix / modify by other users since they will be unable to upload remixes because a small number of new features will bring the json size too high and their remix can't be saved or shared. Additionally, users are forced to make the code harder to read in order to minimise its overall size which makes it harder for others to read what the code does and learn from it.

Since large assets of 10Mb in size have a much more significant impact on overall project sb3 size, I think that increasing the project.json limit from 5Mb to something like 10Mb or 15Mb would have very little negative impact on the platform as a whole and will have a very positive overall impact from the larger projects people will be able to create and share.

when green flag clicked
think [I'm gonna make a huge RPG game]
repeat until <(project size) = (max project size)>
code for hours
end
Get stopped by scratch's project limit
Crash out
stop [finding purpose in life v]

pippy2011eight

support, can allow for bigger projects

SpookymooseFormer

Agreed, this will be good for a lot of projects.
IIRC extending it from 5mb to 10mb shouldn't be too hard to add and wouldn't conflict with most things.

Scratchmakermeow

You could bypass some of limits with using colour in each pixel of an image to represent a character or data. Then scan and you would get 480x360=172,800 chars or you could make combinations to increase data usage. Since a raster image’s memory is pretty low, you could get a few more data with this. For code, you might need to program a code reader to run code using lists. But I totally agree on your point.

MaulZ

ok

lochdude

Has there been a response to json size file request? I imagine it wouldn't really effect 95 percent of projects. Just the 5% over achievers who think big.

Robostew

We ALL love arbitrary limitations

Thethree13

Honestly support. Limits discourage big projects creativity, and it's not always possible to just find a way to optimise under 5mb. It would barely increase the load on the servers since it's mostly assets that take up space, not code, and since almost no projects hit the 5mb limit anyways, it wouldn't make the website worse. Only better.

Sincerely hope the Scratch Team take the time out of their busy schedules to implement this (assuming it's an arbitrary limit and not some compression thing)

skyistumbling

235x wrote:
skyistumbling wrote:
Give us 50mb limit already, or actually just take away any limits entirely
We shouldn't take away limits fully, if we do there should be a warning or indicator of the project's size, or simply a check to see if you would be able to fit the project in your PC's RAM

Actually there should be a warning even if this suggestion is rejected.

Warnings aren't ever needed, as people will feel and experience the project collapsing under it's own weight if it ever get's that bloated.
Look at the biggest turbowarp projects, and you will see what I mean. A warning just serves as a red herring and nothing more.

And we absolutely do not need anymore arbitrary limitations anymore, look again at turbowarp and you can see the spirit of scratch will always be maintained even with all it's limitations removed. It's petty to cling so hard to these “limitations” that can be summed up to a few simple if else checks in the JavaScript code of the Scratch VM. It's absurd.

skyistumbling

Thethree13 wrote:
Honestly support. Limits discourage big projects creativity, and it's not always possible to just find a way to optimise under 5mb. It would barely increase the load on the servers since it's mostly assets that take up space, not code, and since almost no projects hit the 5mb limit anyways, it wouldn't make the website worse. Only better.

Sincerely hope the Scratch Team take the time out of their busy schedules to implement this (assuming it's an arbitrary limit and not some compression thing)

It's an arbitrary limit, it is not even a limitation coded into scratch itself; it's just a check ran by the scratch servers when saving a project.
It is already possible to upload projects over the 5mb limit onto scratch, but you have to inject them by bruteforce JS scripts onto passing into their servers.

This takes zero effort to change, it slowly can be summed up to incompetence to a point.

dizzyboy42

10mb would be good but no more

undeterministic

uhhhhhhh, 5 mb is 5 million bytes, for context i would guess that the average block would take up AT MOST 1000 bytes, this gives 50000 blocks. AT A MINIMUM, but probably a lot more.

skyistumbling wrote:
And we absolutely do not need anymore arbitrary limitations anymore, look again at turbowarp and you can see the spirit of scratch will always be maintained even with all it's limitations removed. It's petty to cling so hard to these “limitations” that can be summed up to a few simple if else checks in the JavaScript code of the Scratch VM. It's absurd.

What are you talking about?! Turbowarp doesn't have the 5 MB limit removed at all. All projects that you can access via turbowarp.org/xxxxxx have a 5 MB limit. Also the issue isn't that it is hard to removed the 5 MB, the issue is server size and spam. Additionally, I should note that the backend handles this and the CDN may not be in a state to handle more then 5 MB of JSON without changes.

skyistumbling wrote:
It's an arbitrary limit, it is not even a limitation coded into scratch itself; it's just a check ran by the scratch servers when saving a project.
It is already possible to upload projects over the 5mb limit onto scratch, but you have to inject them by bruteforce JS scripts onto passing into their servers.

This takes zero effort to change, it slowly can be summed up to incompetence to a point.

So what are you “bruteforcing” are you spamming the servers, are you making an API request, because again, the frontend DOES NOT handle the limit. I have checked, so I think you need to elaborate, because you are quite unclear.

Robostew

skyistumbling wrote:
It is already possible to upload projects over the 5mb limit onto scratch, but you have to inject them by bruteforce JS scripts onto passing into their servers.

shhh

Last edited by Robostew (Oct. 28, 2025 01:00:48)

Thethree13

undeterministic wrote:
What are you talking about?! Turbowarp doesn't have the 5 MB limit removed at all. All projects that you can access via turbowarp.org/xxxxxx have a 5 MB limit.

All projects that you can access via turbowarp.org/xxxxxx ARE from the scratch servers. So it stands to reason that they would also have to obey the 5mb limit considering it's the backend that enforces the limit.

undeterministic wrote:
Also the issue isn't that it is hard to removed the 5 MB, the issue is server size and spam.

The 5mb of code is a miniscule amount of the server load. Scratch allows 10mb PER ASSET, let alone per project, and you're much more likely to increase the project size in assets (a couple minutes of HQ music can easily reach 10mb) rather than writing tens of thousands (roughly 20000 to reach the limit, according to my rough calculations correct me if i'm wrong) of blocks of code.

undeterministic wrote:
Additionally, I should note that the backend handles this and the CDN may not be in a state to handle more then 5 MB of JSON without changes.

You may be right but I've never heard that the CDN wouldn't be able to handle an extra 5mb (which only happens given you write a lot of code so it wouldn't happen a lot). Can you give me your source so I can see what you're talking about?

Robostew

undeterministic wrote:
What are you talking about?! Turbowarp doesn't have the 5 MB limit removed at all. All projects that you can access via turbowarp.org/xxxxxx have a 5 MB limit. Also the issue isn't that it is hard to removed the 5 MB, the issue is server size and spam.

Anyone who wants to upload large, malicious projects with the intent of wasting server space can already do that because there isn't a limit on the size of other assets within the .sb3 file as far as I can remember. All this change would do is increase the number of blocks that can be included in a project. If ST is really concerned about server space, they would have put a limit on the size of the project as a whole rather than only the size of the JSON component.

undeterministic wrote:
Additionally, I should note that the backend handles this and the CDN may not be in a state to handle more then 5 MB of JSON without changes.

I don't understand what you're saying here. The CDN should only need to worry about entire sb3s. Why should it matter how large the JSON component of the project is if that isn't the limiting factor for project size? Again, the size of assets is !not checked!

Projects can already be very large, but there is an arbitrary 5 MB limit on the size of just the JSON component of the project.

Last edited by Robostew (Oct. 28, 2025 01:09:55)

Thethree13

Robostew wrote:
there isn't a limit on the size of other assets within the .sb3 file as far as I can remember.

Technically there is - 10mb per asset. but there isn't a limit of total size so you can have as many assets as you want as long as they don't individually exceed 10mb. This means technically a project multiple gigabytes of size can be put on the server - and the project.json still has to be 5mb.

Robostew wrote:
If ST is really concerned about server space, they would have put a limit on the size of the project as a whole rather than only the size of the JSON component.

You're right. They used to in Scratch 2.0 (50mb total project size) and then they changed it to the current system in 3.0. Therefore I think you're right and that server space is not the concern when it comes to the reason why it's 5mb.

Discuss Scratch