Quotas and limits

Merchant API features carry strict quotas and limits.

Note: Quotas and limits are subject to elimination, reduction, or change at any time, without notice.

Update policy

Merchant API enforces the following policies in terms of updates:

• You can only update your products up to twice per day.
• You can only update your sub-accounts once per day.

Method call quotas

Merchant API automatically adjusts call quotas for your products and accounts based on your usage.

Here's how we track your quota usage:

• Quotas are per-method. For example, the get method has a separate quota from the update method.
• Each request counts once, regardless of its type. For example, we count a list request of 250 items once, not as 250 get requests.
• Quotas apply to the Comparison Shopping Services (CSS) group, CSS, account, or sub-accounts against which you authenticate when you make the call. For example, if you authenticate as an advanced account, calls count against your advanced account's quota, but if you authenticate as one of your sub-accounts, calls count against the sub-account's quota.

The diagram shows the hierarchy of CSS groups, CSS, accounts, and sub-accounts.

Check your quotas

To check the current quota and usage for an account, call quotas.list with the name of the account.

Automatic quota only applies to the products and accounts services. If you need an increased quota for any other service, you're hitting your daily quota for the products or accounts services, or you need a temporary increase for the accounts or products services, contact us with the following information:

• Your Merchant Center ID
• The methods you've reached your quota limits on
• An estimate of the number of calls per day you need for those methods
• The reason you need a quota increase
• Whether it's a temporary or permanent increase

We recommend checking your quotas periodically to ensure you have sufficient quota for your implementation, or how your quota is adjusted automatically.

Errors

If you exceed the quotas, you receive the following errors:

• Per minute: quota/request_rate_too_high
• Per day: quota/daily_limit_exceeded

To view your quotas and usage, and request a per-day or per-minute quota increase, see Check your quotas.

The following errors can't be resolved by automatic quota increases, and require you to request additional quota of items, feeds or sub-accounts:

• too_many_items: Merchant quota exceeded
• too_many_subaccounts: Maximum number of sub-accounts reached

Resource representation limits

The following limits describe notable restrictions for certain string values and array fields within the resource representations used in the Merchant API. These limits are the same for both the Merchant API and their corresponding feature in the Merchant Center.

Note that this list of limits may not be complete. We won't extend these limits.

Resource	Field	Limit
shippingsettings	Shipping services per country (services). Shipping groups per shipping service (rateGroups). Labels per shipping group (applicableShippingLabels). Subtables per shipping group (subtables). Number of rows or columns in a single rate table. Length of shipping labels.	20 20 30 100 150 100

The number of rows or columns in a rate table affects the following array fields:

• Array fields within rowHeaders or columnHeaders:
  • prices[]
  • weights[]
  • numberOfItems[]
  • postalCodeGroupNames[]
  • locations[]
  • rows[]
  • cells[]