“Delete 2 million files to continue using your Google Drive account.”This was the message that Reddit user ra13 woke up one day. Google has apparently decided to put a hard limit on the number of files you are allowed to have in a single Google Drive account. Google introduced this file limit without warning anyone that it would happen. Users who went over the limit suddenly found themselves blocked from downloading new files and needed to figure out what went wrong.
Did we mention that it all started in February? Google Drive API issue tracker messageshows that some users have been seeing this error for almost two months now. The original message said: “Exceeded the limit on the number of items sent to the trash or not created by this account.”And sometime in March it was updated to say “Error 403: This account has exceeded the 5 million item creation limit. To create more items, move the items to the Trash and delete them permanently.”Since nothing anywhere informs users that Google Drive has a file limit, users initially thought it was a bug and asked Google to fix it quickly. However, two months have passed and Google has not released an official public response. Some usersit is said that they got Google’s support to privately confirm that the restriction is intended, and a pop-up message is starting to appear in the Drive UI for some users.
It might be understandable to restrict data eaters abusing a free account, but that’s not what’s happening here. Google sells this storage to users through both Google Workspace business accounts and consumer-grade Google One storage plans. Google One has 30TB of storage, which costs an incredible $150 per month to use. The official Google Workspace plans are limited to 5TB, but the Enterprise plan promises “as much space as you need.”From what we can tell in the various comments on Reddit and the issue tracker, both consumer and business accounts are subject to this hidden 5 million file limit.
Google Drive has a file sharing limit of 400,000 files, but this is easily bypassed by simply unsharing files – you don’t have to delete anything. This limitation is also detailed in the Google support articles. The total limit of 5 million files is not documented anywhere, and remember that it’s been two months since it was rolled out. It’s definitely not listed on the Google One or Google Workspace plan pages, and we haven’t seen any support documents for it. Google also doesn’t have any tools to see if you’re getting close to that file limit – there’s no file count anywhere. We’ve emailed the Google press team with a bunch of questions and will update them if we get a response.
Five million 4 KB files would take up 20 GB of disk space, so this file limit is not enough for Google customers to use the storage they are actually buying. You can store billions of files in 30TB of space very easily. Even if Google is going to somehow claim that this limit is acceptable, it’s unforgivable to make it a surprise to paying customers. Google knows how to do it right: you email everyone, write a blog post, and post a pop-up warning message in the Drive UI, and you do it months before the change is actually implemented. Especially for Workspace business customers who have to pay for a more stable version of Google services with a slow rollout,