Does the number of Business Rules affect performance? Looking for thresholds and best practices

[keisuketsun]

Hello,

I’m currently working on optimizing our ServiceNow instance and would like to ask about the impact of Business Rule volume on system performance.

Specifically:

• Is there any general guidance or threshold regarding the number of Business Rules registered on a single table or across the instance that may start to affect performance?
• Are certain types of Business Rules (e.g., Before Query) more likely to cause performance degradation when their count increases?
• What configurations or patterns should be avoided to maintain optimal performance?
• Are there any best practices or documentation references that address this topic?

I understand that execution time and rule complexity are important factors, but I’m particularly interested in how the number of registered Business Rules itself might contribute to performance issues.

Any insights or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @keisuketsun 

Can be a good read:

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0551382

[Bhuvan]

@keisuketsun 

Refer below documentation for Business Rules best practices and optimization,

https://developer.servicenow.com/dev.do#!/guides/yokohama/now-platform/tpb-guide/business_rules_tech...

https://www.servicenow.com/community/developer-forum/servicenow-best-practices-how-business-rules-wo...

Thanks,

Bhuvan

[Ankur Bawiskar]

@keisuketsun 

there is no thumb rule on number of business rules which will impact the performance.

It's recommended to analyze it on requirement basis.

Also if your table is task extended then remember business rules on task table will run on child tables as well.

If my response helped please mark it correct and close the thread so that it benefits future readers.

[Nikhil Bajaj9]

Hi @keisuketsun ,

There is no such Rule about number of Business Rule. If you are really want better performance and best practices - you may go for Healthscan report from servicenow. In that report you will get all the pointers to make your instance performance better, even which methods shoudl eb used in busienss rules and scripts and what to avoid.  They will provide a detailed analysis of system properties etc. so after getting helath scan you can impleemnt those items/pointers in your instance. But I guess Health scan is paid service or it is free once (for PROD) but i guess free on lower instances. So you can explore about it.

If my answer was helpful, please mark it - solutuion accepted.

Regards,

Nikhil Bajaj