Google Colab · Rate Limits

Google Colab Rate Limits

Colab does not expose a request-rate API; instead it enforces session-level limits on runtime duration, idle disconnect, concurrent sessions, and GPU/TPU availability. Resource access is governed by your subscription tier and remaining compute units. Colab Enterprise inherits the standard Vertex AI / Notebooks API quotas.

Google Colab Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Google Colab on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.

It captures 7 rate-limit definitions, measuring hours, minutes, sessions, best-effort, and compute_unit_per_session.

The profile also includes 4 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for resourceExhausted and unavailable.

Tagged areas include Notebooks, Machine Learning, Google Cloud, and Rate Limiting.

7 Limits
NotebooksMachine LearningGoogle CloudRate Limiting

Limits

Maximum runtime duration (Free) session
hours · usage
12
Free notebooks disconnect at 12 hours of continuous runtime; idle disconnects much earlier.
Idle timeout (Free) session
minutes · usage
90
Approximate; Colab disconnects idle Free sessions sooner than paid tiers.
Maximum runtime duration (Pro) session
hours · usage
24
Maximum runtime duration (Pro+) session
hours · usage
24
Pro+ also supports persistent background execution beyond the active session window.
Concurrent sessions per user user
sessions
1
Free and Pro typically support 1 active high-resource session; Pro+ allows additional concurrent sessions.
GPU/TPU availability user
best-effort
see availability
Premium GPUs (A100/H100/L4) are subject to availability and prioritized for paid tiers.
Compute unit consumption subscription
compute_unit_per_session
see live runtime meter
Compute units are consumed per hour of attached runtime; rate varies with GPU/TPU class.

Policies

Session lifecycle
Sessions terminate on idle disconnect, runtime cap, or browser close. Save progress to Drive or GitHub frequently.
Resource gating by tier
Free tier is best-effort and may queue or refuse high-end GPUs during peak load. Paid tiers receive priority but are still capacity-limited at the global pool.
Compute unit metering
Pro/Pro+ subscribers consume from a monthly compute-unit bucket; PAYG users consume from a 90-day bucket. Once exhausted, runtimes downgrade to Free behavior.
Enterprise quotas
Colab Enterprise (Vertex AI Workbench) follows standard Vertex AI / Compute Engine quotas enforced at the GCP project level; raisable via the Cloud Console quotas page.

Sources