Rate Limits

How GPC handles Google Play Developer API rate limits, and how to monitor your quota usage.

Google Play API limits

Google imposes per-project quotas on the Play Developer API. Every request your service account makes counts against two independent limits:

Quota type	Typical default
Daily	200,000 requests/day (resets at midnight Pacific)
Per-minute	Varies by endpoint category

Exact limits depend on your Google Cloud project configuration and the specific API endpoint. Some write-heavy endpoints (edits, uploads) have stricter per-minute caps than read-only endpoints.

You can view your current quota allocation in the Google Cloud Console.

How GPC handles rate limiting

The @gpc-cli/api package includes a built-in 6-bucket rate limiter that distributes requests across endpoint categories to stay within per-minute limits.

Automatic protections:

• Requests are queued per bucket and dispatched within safe per-minute thresholds
• On HTTP 429 Too Many Requests, GPC retries automatically with exponential backoff
• Retry delays increase progressively to avoid further throttling
• If retries are exhausted, GPC exits with code 4 (API error). See Exit Codes for the full list.

The 6 buckets map to Google Play API endpoint categories. Each bucket tracks its own request count and cooldown independently, so a burst of listing reads will not block an upload in a different bucket.

Checking your quota

Use gpc quota to check your current API usage and remaining capacity:

gpc quota

The gpc doctor command includes a quota proximity check (added in v0.9.71) that warns when usage exceeds 80% of your daily or per-minute allocation:

gpc doctor

Both commands query the Google Cloud quota API and report usage as a percentage of your limit.

Best practices

• Use --dry-run during development. Dry-run mode validates inputs and prints what would happen without making API calls, preserving your quota for real operations.
• Batch operations where possible. Commands like gpc listings push send multiple locale updates within a single edit session rather than opening separate edits.
• Check quota before bulk operations. Run gpc quota before large migrations, multi-locale metadata pushes, or batch image uploads to confirm you have headroom.
• Add a quota pre-step in CI/CD. In your pipeline, run gpc quota --json before publish steps and fail early if remaining capacity is too low.
• Spread large jobs across time. If you manage many apps, stagger per-app operations rather than running them all in parallel.

Rate limit errors

Error	Meaning	What to do
HTTP 429 Too Many Requests	Per-minute quota exceeded	GPC retries automatically. If retries fail, wait a few minutes and try again.
HTTP 403 with rateLimitExceeded	Daily quota exhausted	Wait until midnight Pacific for the quota to reset. No amount of retrying will help until then.
HTTP 403 with userRateLimitExceeded	Per-user rate limit hit	Reduce concurrency or spread requests over a longer window.

Run gpc doctor to see quota proximity warnings before you hit these errors. The gpc quota command gives a detailed breakdown of usage by endpoint category.