On Gmail's Daily Sending Limit

We receive many threads in the Gmail Help Community regarding the daily sending limits of personal Gmail accounts ending with @gmail.com. Users typically complain about (a) messages beyond a certain number (often around 100) bouncing back or (b) being unable to increase the daily sending number even when it is comfortably under the limit of 500 recipients mentioned in the related Help Centre article here - Limits for sending & getting mail.

Gmail does not provide additional details; mostly to prevent any abuse of their systems and hence, it becomes difficult for the genuine users to figure out what to look for and how to resolve this situation and prevent its recurrence. In most cases, the affected account is allowed to send messages within 1 to 24 hours.

In this article, we are going to look into the other details that are related to this issue and can impact the daily sending limit on a particular personal Gmail address.

There are a few things to keep in mind concerning the daily message-sending limit beyond what is mentioned in the help article referenced above.

First up, the stated limits in the help centre article are not absolute but relative to individual accounts based on their daily usage pattern. 

Additionally, that limit can be impacted by what the system deems as unusual activity or suspicious usage - particularly any action which could simulate account abuse. While some deviations are allowed, the system may count extremely high numbers as aberrations and act accordingly. As an example, if the average daily send count is around 10, and suddenly the system notices 80 or 90 emails scurrying off your account, it has every reason to count this as unusual or suspicious. 

So, if you need to increase the daily limit, please do so in smaller increments.

Furthermore, the daily sending limit can be different (lower) when someone chooses to use mailing software, an email client or an app script. This is particularly important when a user chooses to send out bulk messages.

Sometimes, undelivered messages that Gmail keeps retrying to deliver can create this situation. This can be particularly impactful when a message is sent to many recipients and can't be temporarily delivered to several of them and Gmail continues to try and deliver the message to them.

In some cases, based on user reports, spoofing is also said to have an impact on the daily sending limit. So, it is always helpful to check under Sent for weird messages or under Gmail All Mail for a plethora of bounce-back messages that one does not remember sending.

Finally, if the account is newly created and immediately used to send out emails in copious numbers (mostly happens with event-specific Gmail addresses), it mimics the activities of a spammer and causes the system to restrict the daily sending limit for that account. Moreover, if such messages are marked by either the intended recipients or the Gmail spam and abuse detection algorithm perceives as Junk, the daily limit for that account can be restricted accordingly as well.

Last updated on: March 12, 2024.