Quotas and limits

The Content API for Shopping imposes strict quotas and limits on some features. All quotas and limits are subject to elimination, reduction, or change at any time, without notice.

Note: If you need to call datafeeds.fetchnow more than once per day, we recommend you use the products service instead to update your product data. We cannot provide a quota increase on datafeeds.fetchnow.

Quota policy

On average, don't update your products more than twice per day, and your sub-accounts more than once per day.

Method call quotas

The Content API for Shopping automatically adjusts your products and accounts quotas based on your usage. Your accounts usage is based on your sub-accounts limit.

Here's how we track your quota usage:

• Quotas are per-method. For example, the get method has a separate quota from the update method.
• patch methods count against both your get and update quotas.
• Each method call within a custombatch counts separately against that method's quota.
• Calls count against the quota of the account you authenticate as when you make the call. For example, if you authenticate as an advanced account, calls count against your advanced account's quota, but if you authenticate as one of your sub-accounts, calls count against the sub-account's quota.

Note: The merchantsupport methods always count against the quota for the account whose issues are requested. This might not be the account authenticating the request.

Check your quotas

To check the current quota and usage for an account, call quotas.list with the merchantId of the account.

We recommend checking your quotas periodically to ensure you have sufficient quota for your implementation.

Automatic quota only applies to the products and accounts services. If you need an increased quota for any other service, you're hitting your daily quota for the products or accounts services, or you need a temporary increase for the accounts or products services, contact us with the following information:

• Your Merchant Center ID.
• Which methods you've reached your quota limits on.
• An estimation of how many calls per day you need for those methods.
• The reason you need a quota increase.

Errors

If you exceed the Content API for Shopping quotas, you receive the following errors:

• Per minute: quota/request_rate_too_high
• Per day: quota/daily_limit_exceeded

Note: Calls that receive quota/request_rate_too_high, quota/daily_limit_exceeded, or authentication errors don't count towards the daily quota but any other unsuccessful calls are counted towards it.

To view your quotas and usage, and request a per-day or per-minute quota increase, see Check your quotas.

The following errors can't be resolved by automatic quota increases, and require you to request additional quota of items, feeds or sub-accounts:

• too_many_items: Merchant quota exceeded
• too_many_subaccounts: Maximum number of sub-accounts reached

Resource representation limits

The following limits describe notable restrictions for certain string values and array fields within the resource representations used in the Content API. These limits are the same for both the Content API and their corresponding feature in the Merchant Center. This list of limits may not be complete, and these limits cannot be extended.

Resource	Field	Limit
shippingsettings	Shipping services per country (services). Shipping groups per shipping service (rateGroups). Labels per shipping group (applicableShippingLabels). Subtables per shipping group (subtables). Number of rows or columns in a single rate table. Length of shipping labels.	20 20 30 100 150 100

The number of rows or columns in a rate table affects the following array fields:

• Array fields within rowHeaders or columnHeaders:
  • prices[]
  • weights[]
  • numberOfItems[]
  • postalCodeGroupNames[]
  • locations[]
  • rows[]
  • cells[]