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Google Drive now has set a maximum limit of 5 million files, regardless of whether users have paid for additional storage, according to a report from Ars Technica. This limit was reportedly introduced by Google in February and affects all users.

A Reddit user named ra13 received a message from Google requesting them to delete 2 million files in order to continue using their Google Drive account. And, per Ars Technica, the Google Drive API issue tracker shows that some users have been encountering this error for nearly two months.

The original message that Google sent said, “The limit for the number of items, whether trashed or not, created by this account has been exceeded,” but now, last month in March, it was updated to say, “Error 403: This account has exceeded the creation limit of 5 million items. To create more items, move items to the trash and delete them forever.”

The 5 million threshold only applies to the files you create in your Drive, and the shared items don’t count against it. Google claims that the change has been incorporated to prevent the ‘misuse’ of its internal systems.

While it may require some effort to reach the 5 million file limit on Google Drive, users who create files with an average size of 400KB and have a 2TB storage tier would reach the file limit before they reach the full storage limit. As a result, some users may be paying for storage that they cannot realistically use. However, it is highly improbable that the average file size for most users is 400KB or less, making this argument irrelevant.

The Verge reports that Google has not changed the information on its Google One or Workspace help pages to reflect the recently enforced file restriction. Although shared Workspace drives have a cap of 4,00,000 files, the 5 million file limit for individual accounts is not mentioned on the support sites.

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