Understanding the GA4 Quota Limits in Looker Studio

**18th May 2023 Update**

Following a recent Google update to the GA4 API, the quota limits have increased by 8 times. You are therefore a lot less likely to experience the Quote Error messages outlined below in your Looker reports. The table below has been updated with the latest quota limits as published by Google.

If you are a regular user of Looker Studio (previously known as Google Data Studio) and use it to report on your GA4 data, you may have noticed ‘Quota Errors’ appearing in your reports recently. In November 2022, Google announced limits to the number of data requests it will allow via the GA4 data connector in Looker and other GA4 APIs. For reports that contain a lot of elements, and reports that are used regularly or by a large number of users, you will find that these limits are soon reached, at which point you will see the below error:

What are the GA4 API Quota Limits?

There are daily and hourly quota limits as well as limits per project and concurrent requests quota limits. The main quotas that appear to be causing users an issue are with concurrency and hourly quotas. Here is a summary of the GA4 API Property quotas:

• Hourly Tokens Per Property Per Project: 1,750 tokens (17,500 for GA4 360) – increased to 14,000 tokens (140,000 for GA4 360)
• Hourly Tokens Per Property: 5,000 tokens (50,000 for GA4 360) – increased to 40,000 tokens (400,000 for GA4 360)
• Daily Tokens Per Property Per Project: 25,000 tokens (250,000 for GA4 360) – increased to 200,000 tokens (2,000,000 for GA4 360)
• Concurrent Requests: 10 requests (50 for GA4 360) – this has not been increased

These apply to the whole GA4 property, so if you have multiple reports linking to the same property they will be sharing these quotas. They are also not user specific, so if 5 different users open the same report then that will use up 5 times the tokens required for a single report view. Also, these limits are applicable to all applications that use the GA4 API, not just Looker. You can see full details of the Google Analytics API Quota limits here, as specified by Google.

How many tokens will each Looker element use?

It is hard to be specific here as it varies depending on the complexity of each item, but below is a rough guide, based on our experience:

Scorecards – a simple scorecard including a comparison with the previous period will usually use 5-10 tokens

Tables – in general, a table will use up about 10-20 tokens, depending on the number of rows and columns being used. This will increase with more complex tables that include filters, blends and calculated fields.

Charts – these are similar to tables, with a simple time-series chart using 10-20 tokens. However this will increase with longer chart time spans and if there are multiple metrics being plotted.

‘Google Analytics token usage’ tool – this is a really useful tool that is available within the Looker report editor. This will show you how many tokens each component (scorecard, table, chart etc) within the current report has used so far.
This is available from the Looker report editor by right-clicking on the report canvas and selecting ‘Google Analytics token usage’ from the pop-up menu to see the report-level token usage. To see component level token usage, right-click on the component and select the same option. With each refresh of the report data you will see these values increase, therefore to get a good understanding of how many tokens the whole report is using, look at the token usage tool when the report is first opened on a new day.

How to avoid the GA4 quota limit errors in Looker

1. Consider the quota limits when building your reporting dashboard, only including essential data.
2. Data will only be downloaded for the current page. Data for other pages within the report will be downloaded when the subsequent page is opened. Therefore you can avoid the concurrent quota limit by having multiple shorter pages, in preference to a single long page.
3. Limit the number of users the report is shared with to only those that need it.
4. If a large number of users need to see the report dashboard, consider downloading the report as a pdf and sharing the static report.
5. Utilise the Google Analytics Token Usage tool to keep an eye on the number of tokens your report is using, and which components are using more tokens than others.
6. If possible, consider using an intermediate data storage such as BigQuery to store your GA4 data. You can then report on the BigQuery data in Looker. This will avoid the need for the GA4 API and there will be no restrictions on the data that you can use.

Article by: Elaine, Technical SEO Manager More articles by Elaine

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