Google Workspace · Rate Limits

Google Workspace Rate Limits

Google Workspace REST APIs are governed by Google Cloud per-project quotas. Each Workspace API publishes its own service-specific quotas (visible in the Google Cloud Console > IAM > Quotas page) typically expressed as queries per minute per project, queries per minute per user, and per-user-per-second limits. Examples include Admin SDK Reports at 2,400 QPM per user per project with a separate filter-query limit of 250 per minute / 15,000 per hour. Quotas can be raised via Google Cloud support.

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

It captures 7 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests_per_minute, varies, requests_per_second, and records_per_page.

The profile also includes 4 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled, quotaExceeded, and serviceUnavailable.

Tagged areas include Rate Limiting, Calendar, Collaboration, Email, and Productivity.

7 Limits Throttle: 429 Quota: 429
Rate LimitingCalendarCollaborationEmailProductivityStorage

Limits

Admin SDK Reports — activities.list (default) project/user
requests_per_minute · minute
2400
Per-user-per-project default; configurable in Google Cloud Console.
Admin SDK Reports — filter queries project/user
requests_per_minute · minute
250
Filter queries also capped at 15,000 per hour. Calls using only startTime/endTime do not count.
Gmail API — per-user user
varies
see service-specific quotas page
Gmail uses quota units per request rather than raw QPS; default 250 quota units per user per second with per-method costs documented.
Google Drive API — per-user user
requests_per_second
see service-specific quotas page
Default per-user QPS plus per-project QPS; raise via support.
Google Calendar API — per-user user
requests_per_second
see service-specific quotas page
Other Workspace APIs (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Chat, Forms, Vault, Classroom, etc.) project/user
varies
see service-specific quotas page
Each API has its own published per-user and per-project limits — see the API Library quota page in Google Cloud Console.
maxResults page size request
records_per_page
1000
Most list endpoints support a maxResults of 0-1000 with default 1000.

Policies

Backoff Strategy
Use exponential backoff with jitter on 429 / 503; respect Retry-After when present.
Quota raise via support
Default project-level quotas can be increased through the Google Cloud Console quota request flow.
Per-user vs per-project scoping
Most Workspace APIs enforce both per-authenticated-user and per-project quotas; either ceiling can throttle.
Use of audit log exports
For high-volume Reports API consumers, Google recommends BigQuery audit log export instead of polling activities.list.

Sources