{"rid":"storage/gmail-15-gb-shared-and-the-honest-ceiling-of-gmail-as-in","card":{"rid":"storage/gmail-15-gb-shared-and-the-honest-ceiling-of-gmail-as-in","eid":"google","topic":"storage","slug":"gmail-15-gb-shared-and-the-honest-ceiling-of-gmail-as-in","provider":"Gmail (free @gmail.com) — 15 GB shared, and the honest ceiling of 'Gmail as infinite storage'","url":"https://mail.google.com","domain":"google.com","category":"cloud-drive","tier":null,"verdict":"fails-quota","vorder":6,"grp":"rejected","confidence":"reported","binding":"per-ip-shaping","identity_kind":"email","identity_basis":"stated","needs_card":0,"needs_phone":0,"needs_id":0,"needs_institution":0,"country":null,"crypto":null,"interfaces":"rest","egress_metered":0,"per_object_bytes":null,"retention_days":null,"verified_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z","verified_basis":"inherited","checked_on":"2026-10-21","stale_on":"2026-11-04","n_evidence":4,"usd_month":null,"usd_per_tb_month":null,"summary":"15 GB per Google Account, shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos: \"Each Google Account includes up to 15 GB of storage, which is shared across Gmail, Google D...","duplicate_of":null,"n_unknown":8},"record":{"topic":"storage","slug":"gmail-15-gb-shared-and-the-honest-ceiling-of-gmail-as-in","provider":"Gmail (free @gmail.com) — 15 GB shared, and the honest ceiling of 'Gmail as infinite storage'","url":"https://mail.google.com","category":"cloud-drive","free_tier":{"stated":"15 GB per Google Account, shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos: \"Each Google Account includes up to 15 GB of storage, which is shared across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos.\" Attachments: 25 MB send (\"For personal Gmail accounts, the limit is 25 MB\"), 50 MB receive.","unit":"GB","metered_on":"stored-bytes","source_url":"https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/9312312","read_on":"2026-10-21","notes":null},"per_object_cap":{"stated":"not stated","source_url":"https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/9312312","notes":"not stated"},"retention":{"stated":"not stated","source_url":"https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/9312312","notes":"not stated"},"egress":{"terms":"Free for the account holder — Gmail has no egress meter at all; the constraint is the bandwidth throttle, not a price. That is precisely why the throttle is the finding.","metered":false},"interface":["rest"],"interface_detail":"rest","tooling":"IMAP probe-verified: `imap.gmail.com:993` -> `* OK Gimap ready` / `* CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UNSELECT IDLE NAMESPACE QUOTA ID XLIST CHILDREN X-GM-EXT-1 XYZZY SASL-IR AUTH=XOAUTH2 AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=PLAIN-CLIENTTOKEN AUTH=OAUTHBEARER` (XOAUTH2 required for real use). Gmail API: `messages.insert` = 25 units, 6,000 units/min/user, 80,000,000 units/day/project.","chaining":"N accounts × 15 GB minus whatever Drive/Photos already took. But the multiplier that matters is not accounts — see limits. This is the classic 'infinite Gmail storage' idea and it does not survive arithmetic.","limits":[{"kind":"per-ip-shaping","value":"0.5 GB/day","source":"https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/9312312"},{"kind":"per-ip-shaping","value":"2.5 GB/day","source":"https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/9312312"}],"limits_note":"**This is the answer to the brief's question.** The binding constraint is per-ip-shaping at the protocol level, not bytes: Gmail IMAP **upload is capped at 500 MB/day** and IMAP download at 2,500 MB/day (Workspace docs, applied to all editions). SMTP advertises `250-SIZE 35882577` (34.2 MiB) per message. So per account the real write rate is ~0.5 GB/day and the real read rate is ~2.5 GB/day. Filling 15 GB therefore takes a **minimum of ~30 days per account**, and serving 500 GB/day of reads requires **~200 accounts running in parallel every day**. Gmail is not a fetch tier by two orders of magnitude. To reach 10 TiB of writes you would need 20,480 account-days of upload. Verdict on the idea: 15 GB × unlimited accounts is arithmetically true and operationally false — the daily byte meter, not the quota, is the wall.","identity_cost":{"kind":"email","detail":"derived from the record's prose, not from an identity field, and no signup was executed: 15 GB per Google Account, shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos: \"Each Google Account includes up to 15 GB of storage, which is shared across Gmail, Google Drive, an","country":null},"reliability_note":"Exceeding the bandwidth limit suspends IMAP upload for ~1 hour (up to 24 h); repeated heavy sync is the documented trigger, and the docs explicitly call out 'syncing a Gmail account to a third-party email client' as a cause.","confidence":"reported","confidence_note":"One page read moves it to documented.","evidence":[{"url":"https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/9312312","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"\"15 GB ... shared across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos\""},{"url":"https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/gmail/gmail-bandwidth-limits","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"IMAP download 2,500 MB/day, IMAP upload 500 MB/day, web upload 1,500 MB/day"},{"url":null,"date":"2026-10-21","proved":"probe: openssl s_client smtp.gmail.com:587 STARTTLS EHLO -> 250-SIZE 35882577"},{"url":null,"date":"2026-10-21","proved":"probe: imap.gmail.com:993 -> * OK Gimap ready; CAPABILITY incl. QUOTA, X-GM-EXT-1, AUTH=XOAUTH2"}],"verdict":"fails-quota","verified_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z","notes":"15 GB per Google Account, shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos: \"Each Google Account includes up to 15 GB of storage, which is shared across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos.\" Attachments: 25 MB send (\"For personal Gmail accounts, the limit is 25 MB\"), 50 MB receive.","extras":{"dead_end":{"failure_class":"quota","why":"15 GB per Google Account, shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos: \"Each Google Account includes up to 15 GB of storage, which is shared across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos.\" Attachments: 25 MB send (\"For personal Gmail accounts, the limit is 25 MB\"), 50 MB receive.","retry_when":null,"first_recorded":"2026-10-21"}},"binding":"per-ip-shaping","binding_note":"one stream is shaped, and a user's throughput is the shaped rate times the number of streams"},"claims":[{"path":"$.free_tier.stated","kind":"free-quota","num":15,"unit":"GB","per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"ok"},{"path":"$.limits[0].value","kind":"limit:per-ip-shaping","num":0.5,"unit":"GB","per":"day","currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"ok"},{"path":"$.limits[1].value","kind":"limit:per-ip-shaping","num":2.5,"unit":"GB","per":"day","currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"ok"}],"unknown":[["$.evidence[2].url","private-url"],["$.evidence[3].url","private-url"],["$.extras.dead_end.retry_when","process"],["$.free_tier.notes","process"],["$.per_object_cap.notes","not-extracted"],["$.per_object_cap.stated","not-extracted"],["$.retention.notes","not-extracted"],["$.retention.stated","not-extracted"]],"history":[],"drift":[]}