This disclosure provides systems, methods and apparatus including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for a user equipment (UE) to determine and apply limits to physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) processing in a dual active protocol stack handover scenario. In one aspect, the UE utilizes a joint blind decode capability for both a source cell group and a target cell group to determine whether a total limit for PDCCH candidates to monitor or non-overlapped control channel elements (CCEs) to monitor is applicable. The UE may identify a per cell limit for each configured single transmit receive point (TRP) cell and each multiple TRP cell based on a sub-carrier spacing SCS of the cell and the determination. The UE may include an interface configured to obtain a PDCCH for a slot. The UE may perform blind decoding operations on CCEs up to the per cell monitoring limit for each cell.