A system and method for managing threads and thread requests in an application server. If the application is a thread-partitioned application with a request, the thread manager may determine if an application thread array for the application has less than the maximum number of threads partitioned for the application. If it does, the thread manager may retrieve a thread from the main thread pool, and assign it to the request. If it does not, the thread manager may determine if there are any free threads in an application thread array, and if there are, one of the free threads in the application thread array may be assigned to the request. If there are no free threads available in the application thread array, the request may be added to a ready queue.