500 Row Limit - What Counts?

[EIG]

Hi, Jeff
I had a follow up question about rows. Are the same rows in sheets/tables counted every time they are referenced or just once regardless of how many time referenced? Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Jeff_Hager]

Just once.

[OllieCobb]

@a.manda

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…)

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!

First of all, as you mentioned, the row limit applies to all sheets in your app, regardless of whether they are displayed in the app or not. So even if you’re not displaying the User Data sheet in your app, the rows in that sheet will count towards your limit if they are being used in any way by your app (for example, in relations, lookups, or other calculations).

It’s possible that something changed in your app that caused the User Data sheet to start counting towards your row limit. For example, if you added a new relation or lookup that uses the User Data sheet, that could be causing the sheet to count towards your limit. Or it’s possible that there was a bug in Glide that caused the sheet to not count towards your limit before, but that bug has been fixed.

As for the phantom rows that you’re seeing when you duplicate your app, it’s possible that those are rows that were deleted from the User Data sheet but are still being counted towards your limit. It’s also possible that there is a bug in Glide that is causing the row count to be incorrect when you duplicate your app. Unfortunately, without more information it’s hard to say for sure.