According to the source code, the maximum size of a list is PY_SSIZE_T_MAX/sizeof(PyObject*) . PY_SSIZE_T_MAX
is defined in pyport.h to be ((size_t) -1)>>1.
On a regular 32bit system, this is (4294967295 / 2) / 4 or 536870912. Therefore the maximum size of a python list on a 32 bit system is 536,870,912 elements.