Google has made it seamless to conduct group meetings and collaborate with your clients, and co-workers remotely with the help of Google Meet. The service has garnered quite an audience by offering interactive features like presenting single Chrome tabs,low-light mode, Noise cancellation, view everyone, and more. Like any service, there are a few limitations to Google Meet that you should know of including some for free users.
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What is Google Meet
Formerly known as Hangouts Meet, Meet is Google’s enterprise video conferencing solution that features group audio/video calling, live streaming, screen sharing, real-time captions, call muting, background noise canceling, low-light video enhancement, and more.
The service is not just a video conferencing solution but also offers its own bits in terms of collaboration with the ability to share images, videos, and documents locally and from the cloud. In terms of data protection, Meet comes with 2-Step Verification and support for encryption standards like Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP).
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Google Meet Participants Limit
Google has set a participant limit per session for using Google Meet. If you’re a non-G Suite user, meaning if you’re using Google Meet using your personal Google account, you can interact with up to 100 participants during a meeting. The same limit applies to G Suite Education and G Suite Basic users.
For users of G Suite Essentials and G Suite Business, G Suite Enterprise Essentials, G Suite Enterprise, and G Suite Enterprise for Education, the maximum number of participants per meeting is set at 250.
Related: How to record a Google Meet video meeting
| Google (or G Suite) account type | Maximum number of participants per meeting |
| Regular (non-G Suite) Google account | 100 |
| GSuite Education, GSuite Basic | 100 |
| G Suite Essentials, GSuite Business | 150 |
| G Suite Enterprise Essentials, GSuite Enterprise, GSuite Enterprise for Education | 250 |
Related: Zoom vs Google Meet: All you need to know
Google Meet Time Limit
Until April 2020, Google Meet was only available for G Suite users. However, recent changes to the service have lifted up the availability and now users on Meet can enjoy continuous meetings for at least 24 hours at once.
Free users of Google Meet can only hold a meeting for up to 60 minutes for group calls and up to 24 hours for 1:1 meetings.
Google is extending this time limit for its G Suite Essentials and G Suite Enterprise Essentials users who can conduct meetings for as long as 300 hours at a stretch.
| Google account type | Time limit for 1:1 session | Time limit for Group Meetings |
| Regular (non-G Suite) Google account | 24 hours | 1 hour (24 hours through June 28, 2021) |
| G Suite Essentials, G Suite Enterprise Essentials | 24 hours | 24 hours |
Google Meet Limit for Joining Meeting in Advance
To prevent a brute force attack that can hamper a meeting’s proceedings, Google prevents external users from joining a meeting before the allotted time. If you have scheduled a meeting on Google Meet, external participants won’t be able to join a meeting more than 15 minutes in advance.
External users are those who haven’t been invited by in-domain participants or those who do not have a calendar invite. These users can join NOT more than 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the meeting.
Google Meet Screen Limit for Participants
Google recently added support for more participants per screen on Meet. If you’re using Google Meet on the web, you can now view as many as 49 participants at once in both Auto and Tiled layouts. The feature is accessed for both paid and free users of Google Meet but these many participants can only be viewed on the same screen when using Meet on the web.
Zoom also lets you view up to 49 attendees at a time during a meeting session.
Related: Google Meet vs Duo: Which app should you pick?
Google Meet Storage Limit
Meeting organizers on Google Meet can record the meeting footage with audio and save them to Google Drive which also hosts the files that are shared by members of the organization.
Regular free users only get as much as 15GB of storage, which is originally available to them through their personal Google account. Both Enterprise and Business users get a total of 1TB of storage for file sharing and meeting recording for each user in the organization.
| Google account type | Maximum Storage available |
| Regular (non-G Suite) Google account | 15 GB |
| G SuiteBasic | 30 GB |
| G SuiteBusiness | 1 TB per user (if 4 or fewer users are in the organization) |
| G SuiteEnterprise | 1 TB per user (if 4 or fewer users are in the organization) |
Google Meet Live Streaming Limit
Google Meet only supports hosting meetings of up to 250 participants, as mentioned above, which means if you’re the host of a large organization, you cannot invite all your employees as participants to a meeting. However, the service has an in-house Live Streaming feature that lets you add view-only attendees who can stream the meeting as if it were a live event.
At the time, Google allows you to host live streaming of up to 100,000 people and the feature is actively available for G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Enterprise for Education, and G Suite Enterprise Essentials users.
| Google account type | Maximum number of people on Live streaming |
| Regular (non-G Suite) Google account | NA (was previously available) |
| G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Enterprise for Education, G Suite Enterprise Essentials | 10000 |
Google Meet Notification Limit
Whenever a participant joins a meeting, you as a host will be notified about it. However, Google Meet will only alert you with a chime for the first 5 people who join the meeting after you. If new participants enter the meeting after the first 5, you’ll only receive a silent notification for the new participants.
Google Meet Dial-in Call Limit
Google allows users to dial in for audio-only access to a Meet video meeting if it has been approved by the respective Google Workspace administrator. If this feature is enabled, you can dial in during the scheduled meeting time by entering the phone number included in a meeting invitation and then entering the meeting PIN. This feature is only available for meetings created through a Google Workspace account.
At the moment, Google Meet supports dial-in phone calls for up to 8 hours. This means that your phone call to the Google Meet session will drop after 8 hours of entering the meeting. This period could be shorter depending on your carrier’s call restrictions.
After you’re dropped out of a dial-in call, you can get back into the meeting by dialing into the session using the same credentials as before.
Google Meet Free Limit
If you have a Google account, you can access Google Meet at any time for as long as you would like to. However, some of the features that are available for now free-of-cost are accessible for a limited time. These include:
- Meeting length: If you’re using Google Meet for free, you can conduct a single meeting for 24 hours forever.
- Number of meetings you can host: Similar to what’s available for Google Workspace Essentials and Enterprise members, free users of Gmail can also access an unlimited number of meetings from their accounts.
- Meeting participants for group calling: Free Google account users can avail group calling on Google Meet with up to 100 participants in a single session. This feature will be available for free users forever without a deadline.
- Extended Group Meeting support: While individual one-to-one meetings can be hosted for 24 hours by default, Google is offering up to 24 hours of group video meetings for all free users through June 28, 2021. After the stipulated deadline, you will be downgraded back to the 1-hour limit during group video conferences.
- Free access to G Suite (Not applicable now, was previously available): Google was previously offering the ability to access G Suite Essentials and G Suite Enterprise Essentials plans for free. However, you will now have to pay up to $10 per active user per month and $20 per active user per month for G Suite Essentials and G Suite Enterprise Essentials respectively.
- Livestreaming support (Notapplicable now, was previouslyavailable): Google Meet previously allowed you live stream a meeting to up to 100,000 attendees for free users. Now, you can no longer allow live-streaming on meetings without paying for a G Suite account.
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