Google Workspace Storage Limits in 2025

Google Workspace storage limits have become a critical consideration for businesses and individuals managing valuable cloud data. With Google’s transition from the old G Suite unlimited storage to a more structured pooled storage system, knowing your storage boundaries and options is essential. Whether you’re a small organisation or an enterprise user, understanding how storage is allocated, managed, and what happens if limits are reached will help you prevent disruptions, optimise usage, and ensure business continuity. This guide provides a comprehensive look into Google Workspace storage limits, best practices to manage storage, and how to navigate recent changes coming into effect.

What Are Google Workspace Storage Limits?

In Google Workspace, storage is pooled across all users in an organisation rather than being strictly allocated on an individual basis. This means the total storage available is shared among users, which provides flexibility but also requires awareness of pooled limits. Depending on your subscription plan, storage per user or per organisation varies:

• Basic and Business Starter plans offer 30 GB per user.
• Business Standard plans come with 2 TB per user.
• Business Plus plans provide up to 5 TB per user.
• Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus offer 5 TB per user with expandable pooled storage under specific conditions.

Keep in mind that pooled storage includes data from Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos within the Workspace environment. However, storage for Drive shortcuts or files shared from outside the organisation does not count towards your limits. Understanding the specific storage policy for your plan type ensures clarity about what resources you truly have access to.

How Does Pooled Storage Impact Your Workspace?

The pooled storage model means that your organisation’s storage is summed across all licensed users. This approach allows for adaptability, some users in your organisation might use more, while others use less storage, but the total cannot exceed your pooled capacity. For example, 30 users on a Business Standard plan would collectively share 60 TB of storage (30 users × 2 TB each).

However, challenges exist, such as:

• Minimum user requirements to unlock additional or unlimited storage tiers, such as 5 or more users for expanded Enterprise plan storage.
• Managing storage distribution by setting limits on groups or organisational units to prevent disproportionate consumption.
• Daily upload limits and restrictions especially evident in shared drives and can impact teams heavily working with large files.

This system requires administrators to monitor storage usage closely and communicate transparently with end users about storage impact and availability.

What Happens When You Near Or Reach Your Storage Limit?

Once your organisation approaches or exceeds its storage limit, Google will send out warnings. If you go over your limit:

• Accounts may enter a read-only mode disabling uploading new files or creating new Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Forms.
• Email sending capability may be paused, though receiving and viewing emails generally remain intact.
• Shared drives exceeding limits prevent members from adding or editing files.

These pause states continue until storage usage drops below the threshold or you acquire additional storage. The business impact can be significant, halting collaboration and communication, so proactive management of storage is critical.

How Can You Monitor and Manage Google Workspace Storage?

Google Workspace admins have access to storage dashboards showing detailed breakdowns of usage by app, shared drives, and users. These insights enable you to:

• Identify heavy storage users and groups.
• Pinpoint large or unnecessary files for removal.
• Allocate storage limits by organisational unit or group to control individual consumption.

Users can also view their personal storage usage via Google Drive settings to manage their quota proactively.

Cleaning up storage involves best practices such as:

• Deleting old or duplicate emails and attachments in Gmail.
• Removing large or redundant files from Drive and shared drives.
• Utilising Google Photos storage optimisations by choosing high-quality options.
• Emptying Trash folders regularly because trashed files still consume quota until permanently deleted.

When necessary, administrators can buy additional pooled storage in scalable increments or consider upgrading to higher-tier plans to gain more capacity.

How to Get More Storage or “Unlimited” Storage?

The unlimited storage promise that accompanied previous G Suite Business and Enterprise plans has been largely phased out in Google Workspace. Now:

• Unlimited storage generally requires at least five user licences on Enterprise Standard or Enterprise Plus plans.
• For organisations below this user count, additional storage expands only in 5 TB increments and requires manually requesting increases from Google.
• Adding users increases pooled storage automatically as each licence brings its storage allocation to the pool.

Because unlimited storage is effectively reserved for larger enterprises, small businesses or individual users may need to plan carefully or consider third-party backup solutions like BackupVault to protect critical data without being throttled by Google’s storage limits.

What Are Best Practices for Managing Google Workspace Storage?

Effective storage management helps reduce disruptions and ensures you make the most of your Google Workspace investment.

• Keep frequent tabs on your organisation’s pooled storage dashboard.
• Set and enforce storage limits on organisational units prone to heavy usage.
• Educate users about storage-efficient behaviours, such as using Google’s native file types and compressing media.
• Employ third-party backup and recovery services for an additional layer of security and recovery from accidental deletions or ransomware incidents.
• Plan storage upgrades or adjustments during low-impact periods to avoid sudden service interruptions.

Stay Ahead of Google Workspace Storage Limits

Given the restrictions and potential confusion around Google Workspace storage, BackupVault offers a secure and straightforward cloud backup solution designed specifically for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and more.

Explore BackupVault’s Google Workspace backup service and start a free trial to ensure your organisation’s critical data remains secure and recoverable.