Gmail Sending Limits: How Many Emails Can You Send a Day?
Updated 8 min read
Table of contents
A personal Gmail account can send 500 emails a day. A paid Google Workspace account can send 2,000 (500 during the free trial). Google counts the Workspace limits over a rolling 24 hours, not per calendar day. The limit belongs to your Google account, so emails you write by hand, mail merges, scripts and add-ons all count toward it. Go over, and you can't send for up to 24 hours.
Those are the top numbers, and you may hit a lower one first. Scripts, new accounts and, on Workspace, recipients outside your organization all have lower limits. If you were blocked well below 500, start with what else is sending from your account.
Google's limits for your account
Google counts three things: emails, recipients and different people. An email is each message you send. A recipient is each address it goes to. "Different people" counts each address only once a day, so 5 emails to the same 10 people are 50 recipients but 10 different people. When you send one personalized email to each person, the three numbers are the same.
Every address in Cc or Bcc is one more recipient on each email. Put one address in Bcc on a mail merge to 500 people, and it gets 500 copies: that's 1,000 recipients, not 500. YAMM, our add-on, counts all 1,000 toward your quota.
| Personal Gmail | Google Workspace | |
|---|---|---|
| Emails a day | 500 | 2,000 |
| Recipients in one email (To, Cc and Bcc together) | 500 | 2,000 (at most 500 outside your organization) |
| Recipients a day, counting every send | No separate limit published | 10,000 |
| Recipients outside your organization a day | No separate limit published | 3,000 |
| Different people a day | No separate limit published | 3,000 (2,000 outside your organization) |
"Outside your organization" means any email address outside your primary domain, including domain aliases and alternate domains. For personal Gmail, Google publishes only the first two limits, with no inside or outside split.
How you send changes the limit
Each way of sending has its own limits:
| How you send | Most recipients in one email | Daily limit on personal Gmail | Daily limit on Google Workspace |
|---|---|---|---|
| An app that sends through the Gmail API | 500 | 500 emails (the account's limit) | 2,000 emails (the account's limit) |
| A Google Apps Script, like one in a Google Sheet | 50 | 100 recipients | 1,500 recipients (2,000 inside your domain) |
YAMM's daily quota
YAMM has its own daily quota. It counts recipients:
| Your Google account | YAMM plan | Recipients a day | With personalized attachments |
|---|---|---|---|
| @gmail.com | Pro gmail.com | Up to 400 | Up to 100 |
| Google Workspace | Pro Google Workspace | Up to 1,500 | Up to 1,500 |
| Google Workspace in its free trial or warm-up | Pro Google Workspace | Up to 400 | Up to 100 |
It counts the last 24 hours, like Google's Workspace limits. Emails from other add-ons and scripts count toward it too.
The quota leaves room for the emails you write yourself. On Workspace, YAMM stops at 1,500, so the last 500 of your 2,000 stay free for normal email, as they do with Gmail's own mail merge. Other mail merge tools may not stop there, so check before a merge uses up your whole day. On @gmail.com, a day you merge 400 people still leaves you about 100 emails for everything else.
New accounts start lower
A new Google Workspace account can send 500 emails a day during its free trial, to at most 500 different people outside your organization. Those limits don't rise during the trial. After it comes what we call the warm-up: Google raises the limits once your domain has paid at least USD 100 in total (plus the cost of the domain, if you bought it from Google), and that can take up to 75 days after you reach it. YAMM's quota follows the same stages: 400 recipients a day through the trial and the warm-up, then 1,500.
For a new personal Gmail account, Google publishes no lower number. Google watches new Gmail and Workspace accounts closely, so we suggest starting with a small list, fewer than 50 emails.
Attachments
One email in Gmail can carry up to 25 MB of attachments, on personal Gmail and on most Workspace plans. Attach a bigger file on personal Gmail, and Gmail turns it into a Google Drive link. A Google Apps Script has the same 25 MB limit per email. Attachments also use your Google storage, and once it's full, you can't send or receive email at all.
In YAMM, sending a different file to each person (personalized attachments) lowers your quota to 100 recipients a day on @gmail.com and during a Workspace trial or warm-up. After the warm-up, it stays at 1,500.
Blocked before you reached the limit? Something else is sending
Google's limit counts more than what you send by hand:
- Your vacation responder. Every automatic reply counts.
- Aliases and delegates. Emails sent from your other addresses, and by anyone you've given access to your inbox, count toward your limit.
- Other add-ons and scripts. A reminder script, a form notification or another mail merge tool all use the same account.
- Devices that email through your account. A server that sends you alerts through your Google account uses your limit too, so a day with a lot of alerts can block you.
On Google Workspace, emails your account forwards automatically don't count toward the daily limit.
If many of your emails bounce, you may see a different message: "Messages you sent couldn't be delivered." That one is about bad addresses, not volume.
"You have reached a limit for sending mail": what to do now
- Stop sending and wait. On personal Gmail, Google says you should be able to send again within 1 to 24 hours.
- Turn off what else is sending. Anything from the list above that you don't need right now will use up your limit again the moment you can send.
- If the message says your emails couldn't be delivered, check the addresses in your list before you send again.
- On Google Workspace, ask your admin if you still can't send after 24 hours. Google says an account that goes over its limits might be suspended, and an admin may be able to restore it.
Bigger list than your limit? Send it over a few days
Say you need to send one personalized email to each of 1,200 people:
| How you send | Limit a day | Days for 1,200 people |
|---|---|---|
| A Google Apps Script, personal Gmail | 100 | 12 |
| YAMM Pro gmail.com, or Pro Google Workspace on a new account | 400 | 3 |
| YAMM or a script, on a Workspace account after its warm-up | 1,500 | 1 |
No setting lets an @gmail.com account send 1,200 personalized emails in one day.
With YAMM, you start the mail merge once. If your quota is too small for the whole list, YAMM Pro sends to as many people as your quota allows right away and schedules the rest for when it resets. You write the email as a normal Gmail draft, and your list and the opens, clicks and replies stay in your Google Sheet. When the last email has gone out, you can follow up with the people who didn't open or reply, straight from the tracking report. Here's how to send a personalized mass email with YAMM, step by step.
Google's own suggestion is to make a Google Group of everyone and send one email to the group. That works for an announcement, but everyone gets the same email, so you lose the names and the per-person tracking a mail merge gives you.
If you'd rather write the script yourself, our guide to sending emails from Google Sheets covers it. Remember that on personal Gmail, a script stops at 100 recipients a day.
FAQ
Is there an hourly sending limit in Gmail?
Not one that Google publishes: its Gmail and Workspace sending limits are per message and per day. Google does advise sending at a steady rate rather than in bursts.
Does Gmail's 5,000-a-day bulk sender rule apply to me?
Only if your domain sends close to 5,000 messages to personal Gmail accounts in 24 hours. Google counts every message sent from your primary domain together, so a team on Google Workspace can reach it even though one user can send only 2,000 emails a day. A domain that reaches it once is a bulk sender for good, and must set up DMARC and, for marketing messages, a one-click unsubscribe link. Personal Gmail can't send enough to reach it, and Google already handles SPF and DKIM for @gmail.com addresses. On your own domain, every sender needs SPF or DKIM, bulk or not. Our post on Gmail's bulk sender guidelines explains each one.
Sources
- Google: Gmail sending limits in Google Workspace, "You have reached a limit for sending mail", Send personalized emails with mail merge, Apps Script quotas, Gmail API errors and sending limits, Gmail API usage limits, Gmail attachment limits and Email sender guidelines with their FAQ. Google says its limits can change without notice.
- YAMM: daily quota, quota issues, avoiding spam issues and starting a mail merge. All pages read on October 18, 2026.
