Compute Engine quota and limits overview


A quota restricts how much of a shared Google Cloud resource your Google Cloud project can use, including hardware, software, and network components. Therefore, quotas are a part of a system that does the following:

  • Monitors your use or consumption of Google Cloud products and services.
  • Restricts your consumption of those resources, for reasons that include ensuring fairness and reducing spikes in usage.
  • Maintains configurations that automatically enforce prescribed restrictions.
  • Provides a means to request or make changes to the quota.

In most cases, when a quota is exceeded, the system immediately blocks access to the relevant Google resource, and the task that you're trying to perform fails. In most cases, quotas apply to each Google Cloud project and are shared across all applications and IP addresses that use that Google Cloud project.

There are also limits on Compute Engine resources. These limits are unrelated to the quota system. Limits cannot be changed unless otherwise stated.

There are three categories of Compute Engine quotas and limits:

Permissions for checking and editing usage limits

To view your quotas, you must have the serviceusage.quotas.get permission.

To change your quotas, you must have the serviceusage.quotas.update permission.

These permissions are included by default in the basic IAM roles of Owner and Editor and in the predefined Quota Administrator role.

Check your allocation quota

Regional quotas are not a subset of project quotas. Virtual machine (VM) instances are a part of regional quotas.

If you're looking for regional quotas, such as how many VMs you can create in a region, see Check regional quota. To check your project quota, use the Google Cloud console or the Google Cloud CLI.

The following sections describe how to view the limits for allocation quota in your project. To view the limits for API quota and concurrent operations quota, use the gcloud alpha services quota list command. For more information, see View concurrent operation quotas and limits.

For information about quota categories, see About quotas.

Check regional quota

Console

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Quotas page.

Go to Quotas

gcloud

List quotas in a region:

gcloud compute regions describe REGION

Replace REGION with the name of the region for which you want a list of quota information.

Check project quota

Console

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Quotas page.

Go to Quotas

gcloud

Check project-wide quotas:

gcloud compute project-info describe --project PROJECT_ID

Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

Edit your quota

To increase or decrease most quotas, use the Google Cloud console. For more information, see Request a higher quota.

Quota rollouts

Occasionally, Google Cloud changes the default quota for resources and APIs. These changes take place gradually. During the rollout of a new default quota, the maximum quota that appears in the Google Cloud console might not reflect the actual maximum quota that is available to you.

For example, suppose that Google Cloud changes the default maximum quota for firewall rules from 200 to 300, and you use the Google Cloud console to view your quota, you might see the new quota of 300, even though your actual quota is 200 until the rollout completes.

For information about ongoing quota rollouts, see known issues. If no issues are described, no quota rollouts are ongoing.

If a quota rollout is ongoing and you want to confirm the actual maximum quota that is available to you, use the Google Cloud CLI to check your quota. If you need more quota than you have access to, submit a quota increase request.

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