Described herein are systems and methods for providing access to a database in a multi-tenant environment, including the use of a connection pool, and support for limiting the maximum number of connections per tenant or per database shard. For example, when a tenant is associated with a service, configuring a maximum connections per service limit on a shared connection pool indicates to the system that the shared pool should not repurpose existing connections, or create new connections for a service, if the maximum connections per service limit has been reached for that particular service. The system can also maintain a parameter that keeps track of the total number of connections created to each shard of a sharded database. The connection pool can scan the sharded database topology, to determine which shard or sharded instance can satisfy the request, without exceeding the maximum limit for that shard.