Gmail is one of the most popular email services in the world – and for good reason. But whether you’re using a free Gmail account or a paid Google Workspace plan, Google enforces strict limits on how many emails you can send and receive, how large your attachments can be, and how much data you can transfer per day. Why? Because these limits keep the platform fast, reliable, and secure for everyone.
In this article, we’ll walk you through every Gmail limit you need to know in 2026: Daily sending and receiving quotas, attachment size limits, bandwidth restrictions, IMAP and POP limits, and label and filter boundaries – for both free Gmail and Google Workspace accounts.
➡️ Plus, we’ll explain what actually happens when you exceed these limits and share practical tips to stay safely within them.
Summary: Gmail Limits Covered in 60 Seconds
GoGmail restricts how many emails you can send and receive, how large your attachments can be, and how much data you can migrate – and these limits differ between free Gmail and Google Workspace accounts.
➡️ Sending: 500 emails/day (Gmail) or 2,000/day (Google Workspace).
➡️ Receiving: 86,400 messages/day, 3,600/hour, 60/minute for all account types
➡️ Attachments: 25 MB sending/receiving (Gmail), up to 50–70 MB for Google Workspace, depending on the plan. Base64 encoding adds ~33% to file size.
➡️ Bandwidth: Up to 2,500 MB IMAP download/day and 500 MB IMAP upload/day.
Exceed these limits and your connection is throttled.
➡️ Labels & Filters: 500 labels, 1,000 filters, 5 nesting levels, same for all accounts.
⚠️ Exceeding any limit suspends your account for up to 24 hours. Bounced emails during this time cannot be recovered.
💡 Stay within limits by using dedicated tools for mass emails, newsletters and large Gmail migrations, and keep attachments under 18–20 MB or rely on alternative approaches to send large attachments.
In this article, we’ll cover the following Gmail limits:
- Sending Limits
- Receiving Limits
- Attachment Limits
- Bandwidth Limits
- Gmail IMAP Limits & Email Migration
- Label & Filter Limits
⚠️ Troubleshooting: What Happens if You Exceed Gmail Limits?
➡️ Plus: Don’t miss our Practical Tips to Not Exceed Gmail’s Limits
GmailSending Limits
Gmail limits how many messages you can send per day and restricts the number of recipients per message. The exact quota depends on your account type – free Gmail and Google Workspace have different limits. After 24 hours, all quotas reset.
Daily sending limit: You can send up to 500 messages per day with a free Gmail account and up to 2,000 with Google Workspace. Auto-forwarded messages don’t count toward this limit.
Recipients per message: You can add up to 500 recipients per message with Gmail and up to 10,000 with Google Workspace.
| Limit | Gmail | Google Workspace |
| Max. emails per day | 500 | 2,00 |
| Max. number of recipients per message | 500 | 10,000 |
So does this mean you can send your newsletter or run cold outreach using your paid Google Workspace account? No. Google Workspace’s daily recipient limit comes with a few important restrictions in the small print.
💡 Key facts about Google Workspace recipient limits:
- Every recipient counts individually: Send three messages to the same person, and that counts as three recipients — not one.
- You can reach a maximum of 3,000 recipients outside your domain per day.
- You can send to a maximum of 3,000 unique recipients per day.
➡️ As you can see, even on Google Workspace, the effective maximum number of recipients is roughly one third of the stated 10,000 — depending on who you’re emailing.
GmailReceiving Limits
Gmail doesn’t just limit how many messages you can send – it also limits how many messages you can receive per day, hour, and even minute.
Gmail & Google Workspace Receiving Limits:
| Max. received messages per day | 86,400 |
| Max. received messages per hour | 3,600 |
| Max. received messages per minute | 60 |
➡️ These receiving limits apply to all account types (Gmail and Google Workspace) and cannot be changed!
GmailAttachment Size Limits
Beyond message volume, Gmail also regulates attachments. For instance, an incoming email cannot exceed 500 individual attachments.
Additionally, both sending and receiving are subject to file size limits, which typically range from 25 MB to 70 MB based on whether you are using a Gmail or Workspace account.
Gmail Attachment Limits by Account Type:
| Account Type | Max. Attachment Size (Sending) | Max. Attachment Size (Receiving) |
| Gmail | 25 MB | 25 MB |
| Google Workspace Business | 25 MB | 50 MB |
| Google Workspace Education | 25 MB | 50 MB |
| Google Workspace Enterprise Standard | 25 MB | 50 MB |
| Google Workspace Enterprise Plus | 50 MB | 70 MB (since February 2026) |
✅ To learn more about Gmail attachment limits and find out how to send large files, have a look at this tutorial: Gmail Attachment Size Limits – How To & Workarounds
GmailBandwidth Limits
Gmail does not only limit the number of recipients and messages you’re allowed to send and receive, but also the daily data volume that is uploaded or downloaded from or to your mailbox:
Current Gmail Bandwidth Limits:
| Limit | Per Hour | Per Day |
| Download using Gmail Web Client | 750 MB | 1,250 MB |
| Upload using Gmail Web Client | 300 MB | 1,500 MB |
| Download via IMAP | – | 2,500 MB |
| Upload via IMAP | – | 500 MB |
| Download via POP | – | 1,250 MB |
➡️ After exceeding Gmail’s bandwidth limits, your traffic is throttled to a very small data rate, making it effectively impossible to receive or send new messages until the limit resets after 24 hours.
⚠️ You can easily exceed these limits, e.g. when applying huge structural changes to your mailbox (“cleanup”) or when migrating email data from or to Gmail.
Especially when performing a Gmail migration, it’s quite likely that you’ll exceed Google’s bandwidth limits. Therefore, let’s see how Gmail limits affect email migration:
GmailIMAP Limits & Email Migration
When performing an email migration, your progress is restricted by the current Gmail IMAP limits:
For email migrations to Gmail, you can upload max. 500 MB of email data. The data volume for migrations from Gmail to another account are restricted to 2,500 MB every day.
Furthermore, a label can contain a maximum of 10,000 messages, depending on your current settings.
| Criteria | Limit |
| Max. upload | 500 MB |
| Max. download | 2,500 MB |
| Max. messages per label | 10,000 (depending on account settings) |
| Max. visible labels via IMAP per account | 10,000 |
| Max. simultaneous IMAP connections | 15 |
➡️ The maximum number of simultaneous connections is especially relevant when performing a batch migration. Since every connection (including requests to folders) count as a connection, you can speed up your batch migration by closing all other connections to your account (e.g. email clients).
💡 If you’re planning to migrate your emails from or to Gmail, check out the following articles:
GmailLabel & Filter Limits
Overview: Gmail Label & Filter Limits
| Max. number of labels | 500 |
| Max. nesting depth | 5 |
| Max. filters per account | 1,000 |
| Max. characters per filter query | 1,500 |
TroubleshootingWhat Happens If You Exceed Gmail Limits?
The impact of hitting a Gmail limit varies depending on the type of restriction you’ve encountered – from bounced emails to temporary account suspensions:
What Happens When
Exceeding Gmail’s Sending Limits
If you try to send more emails than included in your plan, you’re blocked from sending emails for up to 24 hours. Typically, you see this error message:
550 5.4.5 Daily user sending quota exceeded" error
After exceeding the limit, you can still receive messages, but won’t be able to send new emails or reply to existing messages until the quota has renewed.
What Happens When
Exceeding Gmail’s Receiving Limits
If you receive more emails than included in your Gmail plan, you’ll be suspended from receiving new messages for the next 24 hours. If someone tries to send a message to you while your account is suspended, they will receive the following error message:
450 4.2.1 The user you are trying to contact is receiving mail at a rate that prevents additional messages from being delivered. Please resend your message at a later time.
⚠️ Important:
Emails that are send to you while your account is suspended “bounce”, which means that you will not receive them after the limit has reset. There is no possibility to recover emails that were sent to you during that time, they are lost, and the sender needs to send the message again.
What Happens When
Exceeding Gmail’s Bandwidth Limits
When you hit the daily upload or download rate for your account, your connection is throttled to a very low rate. In your email client, this means that progress will be incredibly slow, most of the time feeling like nothing is happening.
If you’re currently performing an email migration, no further data will be migrated and the calculated migration time will rise. After 24 hours, the limits reset and you will automatically resume at full speed, until the limit is probably exceeded again.
Bonus:Practical Tips to Not Exceed Gmail’s Limits
As you’ve learned by now, it can have serious consequences when hitting Gmail limits. But the good news is: It’s very easy to respect these limitations. Here are three practical tips that help you stay safely within Gmail’s limits:
Tip 01:
Don’t Send Mass Messages Using Your Gmail Account
ℹ️ Plus: When relying on professional tools, email deliverability is much higher and more recipients will receive your message in their inbox and not their spam account.
Tip 02:
Carefully Send Large Attachments
Before sending an email with attachments, have a look at the overall file size of the attachment(s). If the data volume is larger than ~18-20 MB, consider using alternative approaches to send large files.
In this article, we’ve covered different methods to send files of various sizes using your Gmail account: How to send large files using Gmail
Tip 03:
Perform Email Migrations Only With Suitable Tools
When performing an email migration from or to Gmail, make sure that the Gmail migration tool you’re relying on respects Gmail’s bandwidth limits.
In MailJerry, we’ve implemented mechanisms to make sure that your email migration runs smoothly, even when migrating large mailboxes that exceed Gmail’s limits. For special use cases, you can also limit the maximum daily quota to a lower level than the rate Google allows, making it possible to use your email account without limitations while your email migration is running.
Gmail Limits:Frequent Questions
What happens if I exceed Gmail’s daily sending limit?
When exceeding the daily sending limit, your account is temporarily blocked from sending emails for up to 24 hours. You’ll see the error message “550 5.4.5 Daily user sending quota exceeded.” You can still receive messages during this time, but you won’t be able to send or reply to emails until the quota resets.
What happens when I exceed Gmail’s receiving limit?
In this case, your account is suspended from receiving new messages for up to 24 hours. Anyone trying to email you during the suspension receives the error:
"450 4.2.1 The user you are trying to contact is receiving mail at a rate that prevents additional messages from being delivered. Please resend your message at a later time."
⚠️ These emails bounce and cannot be recovered, you won’t receive them after the limit has reset. This means the sender needs to resend the message after the 24-hour window.
Can I send a newsletter to 10,000 recipients using Google Workspace?
No. While Google Workspace allows up to 10,000 recipients per message, the daily unique recipient limit is 3,000 – and only 3,000 of those can be outside your domain.
Even if you remain within the 3,000 recipient limit, using your Gmail / Google Workspace account is not recommended, as your email deliverability rate won’t be very high. It’s very likely that your messages will be marked as spam and will never be received by the recipient. To send newsletters or for extensive outreach, better rely on a newsletter or online marketing tool.
What is the Gmail sending limit per hour?
Google doesn’t officially publish a per-hour sending limit. However, Gmail enforces rate limits on a rolling basis – sending a large number of emails in a short timeframe (even below the daily limit) can trigger temporary restrictions.
➡️ As a general guideline, avoid sending more than 100-150 messages per hour to stay safe. If you need to send emails at a higher rate, use a dedicated email marketing tool instead of your Gmail / Google Workspace account.
Why does my attachment get rejected even though it’s smaller than 25 MB?
Gmail uses Base64 encoding for attachments, which adds roughly 33% to the file size. A 20 MB file becomes approximately 26–27 MB after encoding – pushing it over the 25 MB limit.
➡️ Keep your attachments under 18–20 MB to stay safe.
What happens if I exceed Gmail’s bandwidth limits?
Your connection is throttled to a very low data rate. In your email client, progress becomes extremely slow or appears to freeze entirely. If you’re performing an email migration, no further data will be migrated and the estimated time will increase. After 24 hours, the limits reset and full speed resumes.
Can I increase any of Gmail’s limits?
For free Gmail accounts, no – all limits are hard set and cannot be changed. The only exception is the sending attachment size limit for Google Workspace Enterprise Plus accounts, which can be increased from 25 MB to 50 MB via the Admin Console. All other limits (sending, receiving, bandwidth, labels, filters) are fixed.
How many labels and filters can I create in Gmail?
You can create up to 500 labels per account with a maximum nesting depth of 5 sub-labels, and up to 1,000 filters with a maximum of 1,500 characters per filter query. These limits are the same for free Gmail and Google Workspace accounts.
Do auto-forwarded emails count toward the daily sending limit?
No. Auto-forwarded messages don’t count toward the 500 (Gmail) or 2,000 (Google Workspace) daily sending limit. Only messages you compose and send yourself are counted.
