Overcoming the GA4 Quota Limit in Data Studio (or Looker)
One of the annoying things about GA4 is there is an API quota. When you are building dashboards in Data Studio or Looker studio, you will get a quota error.
Here are the current quotas
| Quota Name | Standard Property Limit | Analytics 360 Property Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Core Tokens Per Property Per Day | 25,000 | 250,000 |
| Core Tokens Per Property Per Hour | 5,000 | 50,000 |
| Core Tokens Per Project Per Property Per Hour | 1,750 | 17,500 |
| Core Concurrent Requests Per Property | 10 | 50 |
| Core Server Errors Per Project Per Property Per Hour | 10 | 50 |
| Realtime Tokens Per Property Per Day | 25,000 | 250,000 |
| Realtime Tokens Per Property Per Hour | 5,000 | 50,000 |
| Realtime Tokens Per Project Per Property Per Hour | 1,750 | 17,500 |
| Realtime Concurrent Requests Per Property | 10 | 50 |
| Realtime Server Errors Per Project Per Property Per Hour | 10 | 50 |
| Funnel Tokens Per Property Per Day | 25,000 | 250,000 |
| Funnel Tokens Per Property Per Hour | 5,000 | 50,000 |
| Funnel Tokens Per Project Per Property Per Hour | 1,750 | 17,500 |
| Funnel Concurrent Requests Per Property | 10 | 50 |
| Funnel Server Errors Per Project Per Property Per Hour | 10 | 50 |
You don't need to know the numbers exactly, you just need to know, if you have a lot of charts and its shared, you get the quota error.
If you are working by yourself, its quite hard to hit the quota. To get the screen shot opposite, I had to set it to auto refresh in Chrome to generate the error.
Ways to get around it
- Supermetrics Connector
- Google Extract
- Big Query
Supermetrics
Supermetrics is the easiest way to get around it. You just connect your dashboard to the supermetrics connector and it caches your data.
It just looks exactly the same. You can usually swap out the data source and be done with it. Its so easy.
The downside, is that its not free. The pricing isn't too bad if you just use the GA4 connector.
For €39 or similar, you can connect up to 10 Google Analytics accounts.
Even if your Looker report contains data from Search Console or Google Ads, you can still use the lowest tier as you just connect those directly. There is no need to connect your Google Ads to Supermetrics thus incurring the extra cost.
You can sign up using this link
If you sign up via my link, then I can help you set it up for free as I get affiliate commission.
Google Extract
This is a little gem that Google provide to speed up reports. It essentially does what Supermetrics does above but you need to extract all your data in advance.
So if you know, you only need event name, screen resolution and region, you can just extract those. Do not try and extract everything as it will just error. Its best for people who know exactly what charts they want and know the data will not change.
Big Query
There are a few ways to get the data in to Big Query and then back to Looker. Currently, for most people, Big Query is free but that might not always be the case. If you are doing a lot of queries, it could end up being costly.
The easiest way to get Data in to big query is to set up the GA4 connector. Its easy enough to do. The problem is, not all the info from GA4 is there. Google does extra processing to the data before you run reports on it in GA4, so even though you get the raw data in BQ, its not as helpful.
You can see the events are similar but not the same. For example, there are no audiences in the BQ data.
I would not recommend BQ unless you know what you are doing with SQL and can decipher the costs. What you don't want to do is use BQ and find out your reports use a lot of queries and it ends up costing you more than paying for Supermetrics.
However, if you have a dedicated data team who know SQL and can manipulate the data, its a great choice.
Another way to Big Query
Fivetran, have a connector that you can use to get the processed data from GA4 to BQ. I think you would be better using the Google Extract function mentioned above though as you still need to know which fields you want in advance.
Conclusion
The easiest way to get rid of the GA4 quota errors in Looker Studio is sign up to Supermetrics and pay. The second way is to extract the data using the Google connector. This is free and also has the advantage of speeding everything up. However, the downside is that you need to extract the data in advance. Its not a straightforward, change the data source and everything works.
Sign up here and I will help you set it all up for free as I get commission.
The lowest plan is €39 a month which is all you need for up to 10 GA4 accounts.
Ben has a BEng (Hons) in Computer Science and 20 years of experience in online marketing, specialising in SEO, lead generation and affiliate marketing. After spending over a decade as an igaming affiliate, he has decided to concentrate on GA4 training and SEO Audits.
