Google Drive Upload Speed - API Limits?

Help and Support
1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I'm consistently hitting a max upload speed of ~328 Mbps (around 40–41 MB/s) when uploading a single large file to Google Drive using rclone. I've tested this across multiple systems and network conditions. I'm on 1 Gbps symmetrical fibre, and I know the line is capable — when uploading multiple files concurrently, total throughput scales linearly up to the full gigabit.

But with a single file, no matter what I try, the upload caps at 40–41 MB/s.

I’ve been building my own desktop uploader app using the Google Drive API and am seeing the exact same limitation. I’ve replicated the test in rclone to confirm it’s not just my code.

I want to know: has anyone recently been able to exceed 40 MB/s upload on a single file to Google Drive via rclone? If so, how? I've seen some old posts here saying 75MB but that was years back.

I've tried

  • Changing --drive-chunk-size from the default 8M up to 1024M and all the ranges in between
  • Setting --drive-upload-cutoff=0 to force resumable uploads for all file sizes
  • Removing all limits via --tpslimit=0
  • Using --buffer-size=1024M to preload more into memory
  • Trying different --transfers values (though irrelevant for a single file)
  • Using my own API credentials (client ID + secret), not rclone’s shared default
  • Testing with multiple machines on different networks (same behaviour)
  • Verified that uploading multiple files concurrently scales linearly to full line speed

Version
rclone v1.69.1

  • os/version: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 22H2 (64 bit)
  • os/kernel: 10.0.19045.4291 (x86_64)
  • os/type: windows
  • os/arch: amd64
  • go/version: go1.22.1
  • go/linking: static
  • go/tags: cmount webdav

Google Drive Workspace

Keen to understand what I might be missing or not, I can get easily 650mbps on a web upload via Google Drive website so it's a shame it's such a performance hit using API!

2

I haven't used Google Drive in sometime, but that's whta I recall as well. I would only get that for a single file. It could be some limit they have for the API but nothing I ever found documented. I ended up just doing more transfers to fill my pipe up when I was uploading.

3

Ah well that is good to hear it sounds like it isn't me! That's what I've done now too.

Interesting one to note as well the Google Drive Desktop App also has the same limit on speed. Tops out at 330mbps on a single file. It's only via Drive Web I can get beyond that - shame they must have some magic sauce making it work!