Quotas and limits

This page provides details on the limits that apply to using Cloud Logging.

To understand your monthly allotment for Logging ingestion and storage, see Cloud Logging pricing summary.

For detailed Logging pricing information, see Google Cloud's operations suite pricing: Cloud Logging.

Logging usage limits

The following limits apply to the usage of Cloud Logging. With the exception of the limits on the number of log buckets and sinks, these limits are fixed; you can't increase or decrease them.

Category	Maximum value
Size of a log entry	256 KB^1
Size of an audit log entry	512 KiB
Number of labels	64 per log entry
Length of a log entry label key	512 B^2
Length of a log entry label value	64 KB^2
Length of a query	20,000 characters
Query fanout^4	200 buckets
Number of sinks	200 per Google Cloud project^3
Length of a sink inclusion filter	20,000 characters
Length of a sink exclusion filter	20,000 characters
Number of exclusion filters	50 per sink
Number of log buckets	100 per Google Cloud project^3,^4,^5
Number of custom indexed fields	20 per log bucket
Number of log views	30 per log bucket
Oldest timestamp ingestible to log buckets^6	30 days in the past
Future timestamp ingestible to log buckets^6	Up to 1 day in the future

¹ This approximate limit is based on internal data sizes, not the actual REST API request size.

² Cloud Logging truncates oversized label keys and values when their associated log entry is written.

³ This limit also applies to billing accounts, folders, and organizations and isn't hierarchical. For example, if you have multiple Google Cloud projects in an organization, then you could configure up to 200 sinks for each Google Cloud project; for that same organization, you could also configure up to 200 sinks at the organization level.

⁴ This limit is the maximum number of buckets that might contain log entries for a resource. For more information, see Query returns an error.

⁵ This limit includes buckets that are pending deletion.

⁶ Log entries with timestamps outside of these boundaries are rejected from log buckets. The Logging API accepts entries with older timestamps, and those entries can be routed to sink destinations but not stored in log storage. The Logging API rejects entries with timestamps more than 1 day in the future and returns an INVALID_ARGUMENT error.

Logging API quotas and limits

The following limits apply to your usage of the Logging API. You can request changes to your Logging API quotas and limits; for instructions, see Requesting changes to Cloud Logging API quota on this page.

Category	Maximum value
API usage	To view your quotas, go to the API dashboard. Click an API and select Quotas.
Lifetime of API page tokens	24 hours
Number of open live-tailing sessions	10 per Google Cloud project^3
Number of live-tailing entries returned	60,000 per minute
Number of restricted fields	20 per bucket
Size of a restricted field	800 B
Size of an entries.write request	10 MB
Number of entries.write requests	120,000 per minute, per Google Cloud project^1^, 3
Number of entries.list requests	60 per minute, per Google Cloud project^2^, 3
Control requests^4 per minute	600
Control requests^4 per day	1,000 per Google Cloud project
Number of Google Cloud projects or other resource names in a single entries.list request	100
Number of concurrent copy operations	1 per Google Cloud project^3

¹ Using exclusion filters doesn't reduce this number because logs are excluded after the entries.write request is made.

²This value is the default setting.

³ This limit also applies to billing accounts, folders, and organizations and isn't hierarchical.

⁴ The daily control-request quota applies to API requests for creating and updating exclusions and sinks. The per-minute control-request quota applies to everything also included in the daily control-request quota, plus API requests for deleting logs and managing log-based metrics.

Requesting changes to Cloud Logging API quota

You can request higher or lower Logging API limits using the Google Cloud console:

1. In the Quotas page, use the checkboxes to select Cloud Logging API, and then click Edit quotas.

   If you get an error Edit is not allowed for this quota, you can contact Support to request changes to the quota. Note also that billing must be enabled on the Google Cloud project to click the checkboxes.

2. In the Quota changes panel, select the service to expand the view and then fill in the New limit and Request description fields. Click Next.

3. Complete the form in the Contact details panel.

4. Click Submit request.

For more information, see Working with quotas.

Optimize usage of entries.list

The expected usage of entries.list is to search for matching logs. If you're regularly exhausting your entries.list quota, then see Read and list logs efficiently for tips on optimizing your usage.

Log-based metrics

The following limits apply to your usage of user-defined log-based metrics. With the exception of the number of metric descriptors, these limits are fixed; you can't increase or decrease them.

Category	Maximum value
Number of labels	10 per metric
Length of label value	1,024 B
Length of label description	800 B
Length of a filter	20,000 characters
Length of metric descriptors	8,000 B
Number of metric descriptors	500 per Google Cloud project^2
Number of active time series^1	30,000 per metric
Number of histogram buckets	200 per custom distribution metric
Data retention	See Cloud Monitoring: Data retention

¹A time series is active if you have written data points to it within the last 24 hours.

² This limit also applies to billing accounts, folders, and organizations and isn't hierarchical.

Logs retention periods

Note: Effective April 1, 2023, storage costs apply to logs data retained longer than 30 days. For pricing details, see Cloud Logging pricing summary. To review the billable storage for your log buckets, go to the Logs Storage page of the Google Cloud console.

The following Cloud Logging retention periods apply to log buckets, regardless of which types of logs are included in the bucket or whether they were copied from another location. The retention information is as follows:

Log bucket	Default retention period	Custom retention
_Required	400 days	Not configurable
_Default	30 days	Configurable
User-defined	30 days	Configurable

For the _Default and user-defined log buckets, you can configure Cloud Logging to retain your logs between 1 day and 3650 days. For information on setting retention rules, see Configure custom retention.