500 Row Limit - What Counts?

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Hi All,

I have gone deep into the forums and can’t find an answer to this. I have a directory app on the free plan (500 row limit) that lists members of a particular group. There are two main sheets to this app - the Member Directory sheet itself, and a sheet I call “Admin” which contains a handful of rows that deal with reformatting of data, advanced searching, a couple booleans, and an uploaded logo image. Obviously all rows count towards the 500 quota in both of these sheets.

I then also have a User Profiles sheet called “User Data” and this sheet lives within Glide. This sheet captures all the signed-in users of the app, which includes directory members as well as people outside of that group. (I should note here that there are several reasons why the User Data sheet and the Member Directory sheet need to stay separate)

Several weeks ago I wondered if the User Data sheet rows would be counting towards my 500 row limit, so I did a bunch of tests where I manually added rows to this sheet and then checked my row count. The count remained the same every time, leading me to believe that the rows of app users would not contribute to my limit. At that time my app made several references to the User Data sheet for tab visibility settings, and included one relation column that joined it to the member directory sheet.

Recently I used the User Data sheet to solve some issues and enhance the app - it now includes a relation to the Admin sheet where I have the app logo uploaded. A single-value column in User Data grabs that logo to populate it into the app’s side menu (yes this is where I want it) when each user successfully onboards w/ a submit button. I also used this new relation to set-up a “this app is down for maintenance” screen that I can activate for all users from within the app. (Aside: this is my new favorite thing!)

Yesterday I noticed my row count had climbed up significantly and after repeating the same test of manually adding rows into User Data, I saw that this time they ARE counting towards the 500 row limit. But, they didn’t before. So what changed?

I tried to figure this out by creating a duplicate of my app/sheets and on the duplicate I started deleting columns in my User Data sheet one-by-one and then checking the row count. No matter what columns I deleted, the row count didn’t change. In fact, when I created the duplicate the row count on the duplicate shot up from 125 to 158!? I thought this was a fluke so I created another duplicate - with the same result of 33 extra “phantom” rows. When I count my rows by hand I come up with 122, so on top of my original row confusion I’m also lost as to where this discrepancy lies. (I did create quite a few fake users in the very beginning of testing the Glide-owned User Data sheet, which I later deleted - is this a bug where Glide is still reading those from its servers whenever an app is duplicated? I know from other exhibited behaviors that those deleted sign-ins ARE retained somewhere…:thinking:)

Every forum post I’ve found on this topic just says the rows count if they show up in your app. But I really want the more nuanced answer - I am not displaying the User Data rows in my app, but I am referencing them plenty - what specific thing did I change that caused them to suddenly start counting?

I’m not yet in danger of exceeding 500 rows, and if I ever do I think the $5/month boost is totally fair for a passion-project app that generates no income. But if the row-counting is due to some silly mistake that’s easily fixed, I’ll probably look there first.

As usual my questions are wordy, so thanks to anyone reading and for any insight!

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If Glide accesses those rows directly it counts. If your vlookup or hlookup accesses those rows they do not count. Keep in mind if you are using a vlookup to lookup data entered into Glide it will not be as fast as if the relationship existed in Glide which is almost instantaneous. But because Glide has that relationship and does access them they would count against your 500 limit. If the rows exist on a sheet that Glide is using then those rows count. The best way to look at it is if you are using formulas in sheets to pull data from other tabs then the only data that would count is the rows the formulas placed the results in as well as the rows the formulas reside in.

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We count all of the rows used in your app.

We count none of the rows not used in your app.

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@Eric_Penn

Glide does not count empty rows, it’s been asked a few times

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Right, as long as the rows are referenced in the app or the tab is referenced in the app. I have a workbook with over 50k rows in it and the app shows 1k rows used because I use vlookup to pull from those 50k rows.

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That’s incredibly useful to know.

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Dumb question: Are the rows in glide sheets also counted to the total?

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yes, they are. (although I would assume that if you unlink a Glide table, then it no longer counts)

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Sorry for the delayed reply, appreciate the responses! Still need a bit of clarity though. Here is the post I referenced when first starting to make my app:

But this isn’t quite true now, correct? I don’t have the users of my app displayed within the app, I only reference them for tab visibility purposes.

@Drearystate thanks for this - sorry to say I actually don’t know what vlookup or hlookup is :grimacing:
(My sheet only has one formula and it’s only to convert emails to lowercase - I copied it from these wonderful forums)
I do have relation columns in my app, my biggest confusion is that I’m very certain my User Profile sheet rows were NOT counting when I first published the app to test it. At that time there was one relation column gathering info into the User Profile sheet from another sheet. However I’ve created a few additional relational columns since then (I’m fuzzy on which ones happened when) Does it matter which direction the relation columns come from? If I have a relation column drawing info FROM the User Profiles sheet, is that when the row count gets activated? Or is it a two-way street and maybe I just encountered a bug where the row counts weren’t updating for me in the moments I was testing it :thinking:

Not at all a dumb question! My sheet in question is a Glide sheet, and it switched from rows not being counted to suddenly being counted :woman_shrugging:t2:

Yes, this is the response I’ve seen before. I was looking to define “used” as my Glide sheet which captures login emails and onboarding (none of which is displayed within the app) was not initially being counted, unless that was a temporary bug in the row count tracker. In other words - if a hypothetical Glide user built an app from a sheet with 50 rows but then incredibly acquired 50,000 users of their little app - would their row count then be 50,050? Do all users that are logged to a sheet count as rows?

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Hi @a.manda,

It is my understanding that if rows are in any way connected to the app, say relations, lookups etc etc. they will be counted whether they are hidden or not.

You mentioned you have your user tab hidden but have a relation to that tab. In this case, Glide will count those rows because the relation connects it to the app.

I hope this sheds some light.

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This is correct. Any rows not shown but used to reference something are still counted.

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@SantiagoPerez @ThinhDinh does it matter which direction the relation is headed? I only ask because when the rows were NOT being counted I did already have one relation enacted - where the user profiles sheet was referencing the member directory to see if the logged in user was also listed on the member directory (wherein they would be able to edit their directory profile)

If it does not matter in which direction the data is flowing then I have to assume there was a bug happening for me when I thoroughly tested the app at this point and my row count was not affected by adding users to the user profile sheet. This was the beginning of ALL my confusion :neutral_face:

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I would say it does matter. I don’t usually refer or relate to data that is hidden so I could not say if it was a bug or that is the expected behavior.

Maybe @ThinhDinh has seen this case before.

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I think everything that is used in the app will always count. If @a.manda can replicate that and have a video then we would know better. I can’t seem to replicate it now.

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I would agree. Regardless of relation direction or how you use it. If glide needs to refer to that sheet data in ANY way, it should be counted against your row count. If you were add a sheet, fill it with a bunch of data, and never use it for anything within glide, only then would it not count. What you experienced most likely was a bug. Long story short…if your app is doing anything with the data in a sheet (displaying or relating), it should count the rows in that entire sheet.

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I’m telling you that if you use a vlookup it doesn’t count. Glide has no way to indentify a vlookup formula. Let me show you some pics

This is my current row count

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This is the last row of that same google workbook

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My 6k rows are all vlookups for user logins, people that have yet to login or probably never will are in that 29k row. So, tell em now how Glide sees those?

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Here’s the thing, Glide is only working with the data the vlookup pulls, not the data it doesn’t that’s why it doesn’t count. I will make a template with the 500 row count so you guys can see and I will use 10k rows for it.

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You are correct regarding this, it’s no problem using a VLOOKUP or a HLOOKUP but Amanda was referring to a relation inside Glide so if those rows are not counted then it’s a bug.

I’m not sure how much delay it would introduce to use a Vlookup on a big set of data instead of a relation as well.

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If the vlookup is pulling from her entry in glide the delay with all sheets closed is about 19 seconds

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@ThinhDinh I am curious enough that I might - when I have time - try to recreate my app up to the point where I first tested the row counts!

@Jeff_Hager it’s just occurring to me that all my testing of row counts took place before that major update of Glide’s sheets that you had told me about - the very update that fixed all my tab visibility issues. Glide sheets are still a bit buggy but 1000x better than they were! I’m guessing my lack of rows being counted was related to their previous-very-buggy state :flushed:

@Drearystate my relations are all within Glide. I’m not advanced enough - though hopefully someday will learn - to use formulas like vlookup and hlookup. Since there appears to be the result of a delay I probably won’t explore them here, but I will refer back to your reply later so that I can learn how they work! Also thank you for validating my point that “rows used in your app” is too simple an answer for curious minds :blush:

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