Google Drive has a secret limit for your files

It turns out that Google counts the number of files you click on Google Drive are allowed to upload, although there is no clear documentation in which the restrictions are described. The magic number? Five million.

This hidden number only became known when users came across it. how on Reddit is to read, users discovered this cap the hard way in February. In a post on Google’s IssueTracker Both individuals and corporate employees found that uploads stopped working in their accounts, however without a clear explanation for the problems, leaving users irritated while dealing with faulty automatic integrations and backup systems. Even upgrading the account to a higher storage capacity did not resolve the issue.

In early March, Google customer service representatives sent personal replies to account holders stating that the 5 million document limit cannot be exceeded, even if the total storage space is below the limits of the Google Drive plan used. A Google Workspace spokesperson confirmed this policy in a statement to CNET, explaining that individual users are limited to a total of 5 million items created to “ensure high performance and reliability.”

However, the application of this limit appears to be inconsistent as other users in the IssueTracker thread have hit the limit at the 1 million mark. If you received error 403 (“The limit for the number of objects created by this account, whether deleted or not, has been exceeded”), you may have already stumbled upon this problem.

Google hides Google Drive limit in documentation

Also in the documentation from Google there is no reference to this limitation of the number of files. At the time of writing, there is only one help page devoted to per-file limits (with a surprising amount of detail).

With shared drive accounts, file limitations are included maximum 400,000 specifiedand the competitor Drop box has according to their own statements no restrictions on the number of files uploaded; the same applies to Box.

Here’s how you can bypass the limit

Affected users are now faced with a difficult decision: switch accounts (either to a competing service or within Google) or start deleting files.

Neither option is easy for those who are part of a large organization (one person described that this limitation affects “tens of thousands” of users connected to the company) and users who use their accounts for cloud backups. Backup software (here are our recommendations) can create multiple small files as part of incremental backups, which can add up over time – as was the case with the Redditor that brought this issue to the attention of r/Google.

Other Reddit users then pointed to a temporary solution by bundling all the documents into a couple of zip files.

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