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Gmail sending limits for Mail Merge

With Mail Merge for Gmail and Sheets you can email about 100 recipients a day from a free @gmail.com account and about 1,500 a day from a Google Workspace account. Google sets these limits, not the add-on, and a paid Mail Merge plan doesn’t raise them.

Last checked: November 5, 2026.

Account Recipients per day through Mail Merge
Free Gmail account (@gmail.com) 100
Google Workspace™ account 1,500
Google Workspace trial account Lower, until the domain has paid at least USD 100 and 60 days have passed

Source: Google’s Quotas for Google Services (Apps Script), “Email recipients per day”.

Why is the limit lower than the 500 or 2,000 I read about?

Those numbers are Gmail’s limits for email you send yourself in Gmail. On Google Workspace, Gmail allows 2,000 messages a day per user (500 on trial accounts) and 1,500 recipients a day for Gmail’s built-in mail merge. See Google’s Gmail sending limits in Google Workspace.

Mail Merge for Gmail and Sheets is a Google Sheets add-on. It sends each email through Google Apps Script, so the Apps Script quota in the table above applies, not the Gmail limits.

How is the limit counted?

  • Per Google account, not per sheet or per campaign. All campaigns you send from one account share the same daily limit.
  • Per recipient. Google counts every recipient. Mail Merge sends one email per row, so one row is one recipient.
  • Test emails count too, because they’re sent the same way.
  • Reset: Google’s documentation says quotas reset 24 hours after the first request. The window starts with your first send, not at midnight.

What happens when I hit the limit?

Google stops sending with the message “Service invoked too many times for one day: email.” Rows that were already sent keep EMAIL_SENT. In the rows that were not sent, the add-on writes one of these statuses:

  • GMAIL_QUOTA_EXCEEDED_TRY_AFTER_12AM_PACIFIC_TIME
  • Error: Service invoked too many times for one day: email.

The current version can’t show how much of your daily quota is left. To estimate it, look at the “Sent:” times in the notes of your Mail Merge column.

How do I send the rest of my list?

  1. Wait. The status text suggests trying after 12 AM Pacific Time. If it still fails then, wait until 24 hours have passed since your first send.
  2. Run the campaign again on the same tab with the same draft. Rows marked EMAIL_SENT are skipped. Rows with a quota status or an error are sent.
  3. Repeat each day until the list is done. The add-on does not continue by itself the next day.

How do I spread a big list over several days?

On the 3. Schedule tab, set Maximum emails per launch a little under your daily limit, for example 90 on an @gmail.com account, so a test email still fits. Run the campaign once a day. Each run sends the next batch of unsent rows.

On a paid plan you can also split the list into tabs and schedule each tab for a different day.

Does a paid plan raise the limit?

No. A paid Mail Merge plan removes the free-email counter and the footer, but every plan is still capped by Google’s daily quota. A Google Workspace account has a higher Apps Script limit (1,500 a day) than a free @gmail.com account (100 a day).

Other Google limits that apply

From the same Apps Script quotas page:

  • 25 MB of attachments per email.
  • 50 recipients per email. This doesn’t affect Mail Merge, which sends one recipient per email.
  • 6 minutes per script run. A single launch stops after 6 minutes. See Exceeded maximum execution time.

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