Quotas and limits

To ensure efficient operation, Cloud Monitoring imposes the following usage limits.

Custom metrics

Category Maximum value
Custom metric descriptors per project1 500
Labels per metric descriptor 10
String length for label key 100
String length for label value 1024
Time series included in a request2 200
Rate at which data can be written to a single time series one point per minute
Histogram buckets per custom distribution metric 200
Prometheus3-exported metric descriptors per project 10,000
Active time series from custom metrics per monitored resource4 200,000
Active time series from external metrics per monitored resource4 200,000

1 This limit is imposed by Cloud Monitoring. Other services might impose lower limits.
2 You can write only one data point for each time series in a request, so this limit also functions as the maximum number of points that can be written per request.
3 Prometheus is a monitoring tool often used with Kubernetes. See Using Prometheus for more information.
4 A time series is active if you have written data points to it within the previous 24 hours. For custom and external metrics, including Prometheus3 metrics, the limit applies to the total number of active time series across all custom metric types, or across all external metric types, for a single monitored resource. An exception is the global monitored resource, for which the limit applies to each metric type separately. This is a system-wide safety limit and isn't customizable.

Monitoring API quotas and limits

Category Maximum value
Limits to API usage See the API dashboard. Click an API and select Quotas to see your quota.
Lifetime of API page tokens 24 hours

Requesting more Cloud Monitoring API quota

You can request higher Monitoring API limits using the Google Cloud Console:

  1. In the Quotas page, use the checkboxes to select Cloud Monitoring API, then click EDIT QUOTAS.

    Billing must be enabled on the project in order to click the checkboxes.

  2. In the Edit Quotas panel, complete the form with your Name, Email , and Phone details, then click Next.

  3. In the Edit Quotas panel, select the service to expand the view, then edit the quotas in that service to your requested limit. Click Done.

  4. Click Submit request.

You can also contact Google Cloud Support, rather than using the Google Cloud Console, to request more Monitoring API quota.

The other limits described on this page are fixed.

For more information, go to Working with quotas.

Data retention

Metric data points older than the retention period are deleted from time series.

Category Value
Retention of metric data points 6 weeks
Lifetime of API page tokens 24 hours

Resource groups

Category Value
Number of resource groups per Workspace 500
Maximum number of groups included in an email report1 10

1 When you configure Cloud Monitoring email reports, you can request information on utilization of your resource groups. Due to a limitation in the email reporter, the generated reports include information for only 10 groups.

Workspace limits

A Workspace can contain up to 100 Google Cloud projects. See Using Workspaces for more information.

Limits for alerting and uptime checks

Category Value
Uptime checks per Workspace 100
Alerting policies per Workspace 500
Conditions per alerting policy 6
Notification channels per alerting policy 16
Notification channels per Workspace 4000
Simultaneously open incidents per alerting policy 5000

Limits for charting

Category Value
Charts on a dashboard 25
Lines on a chart 300