title: Is it possible to increase the Google Sheets API quota limit beyond 2500 per account and 500 per user?
body: <p><strong>The problem:</strong> Running into Google Sheets API read/write quota limits. Specifically, the <em>read/write requests per 100 seconds</em> and <em>read/write requests per 100 seconds per user</em> quotas. </p>
  
  <p><strong>Some background:</strong><br>
  For the past few months I've been developing a web app for students and staff in our school district which uses a Google spreadsheet as the database. Each school in our district was assigned a different Google spreadsheet, and a service account was created to make read and write calls to these spreadsheets on behalf of the web app. </p>
  
  <p>We started with one school of approximately 1000 students, but it has now expanded to two other schools with a total user load of around 4000. Due to the nature of a school day schedule, we started hitting our quota limit (per 100 sec &amp; per 100 sec per user) since almost everyone uses the app at the same time.</p>
  
  <p>I found the <a href="https://developers.google.com/sheets/api/limits" rel="nofollow noreferrer">usage limits</a> guide for the Google sheets API, and as per the instructions I created a billing account, and linked the associated service account project to it. I then went to the quotas section in the developers console and applied for a higher quota. This involved filling out a Google form which asked "How much quota do you need? Express in number of API queries per day." Again, <em>queries per day</em> is not the problem, rather it's the number of queries per 100 seconds and per user (service account). After a couple of weeks our limit was increased to 2500 read/write requests per 100 seconds and 500 read/write requests per 100 seconds per user. The billing account was not charged, and after a little searching, I realized this was a free increase. This bump in our quota limit helped, but it's still going to be an issue because our district wants to add more schools in the future. </p>
  
  <p><strong>Here's what I need to know:</strong> </p>
  
  <p><strong>1) [ESSENTIAL QUESTION] Does Google have an upper limit or maximum to the number of read/write requests a single service account/user/IP can make within the 100 second time frame, and if so what is it?</strong></p>
  
  <p><strong>2)</strong> If it is possible to go beyond our current quota limit (2500/500), is there another way of requesting/applying for the increase. Once again we have a billing account established for the project and are willing to pay for the service.</p>
  
  <p>I've been pulling (what's left of) my hair out trying to find definitive answers to my questions. <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45225734/how-to-increase-google-sheets-v4-api-quota-limitations">This post</a> came close to what I was looking for, and I even did some of the things the OP suggested, but I just need a direct answer to my "essential" question.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Couple more things.</strong>
  I understand that Google Charts Visualization doesn't have a quota limitation, and I'd consider using it however, for privacy reasons I can't have the spreadsheet keys exposed in plain javascript. Are there other options here?
  Also, one might suggest creating multiple service accounts, but I'd rather avoid this if possible.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you for your help. I'm very much a novice and I greatly appreciate your time and expertise.</p>