Hi Glide Community,
I’m seeking clarification on potential implicit traffic, session, or server request limitations for a publicly accessible, read-only app (no user login) on the Glide free tier. While I understand the explicit limits on data rows, data updates (admin-side only for me), and storage, I’m unclear if there are “fair use” caps on a high volume of anonymous users browsing and filtering data.
Full Context:
I’m developing a PWA on the free tier using Google Sheets as the data source. The app is designed to be publicly accessible without any login required – essentially an informational directory of events that users can browse and filter.
I’ve read the documentation on users (especially https://www.glideapps.com/docs/essentials/users#private-vs.-public-users) and understand that anonymous public users don’t count towards explicit “user number” limits. I also understand and accept the constraints regarding data rows, admin-side data updates/edits to my Google Sheet (which are infrequent for my use case), storage, and Glide branding on the free tier.
My concern is about what happens if this read-only public app becomes popular, leading to:
-
High traffic volume (e.g., a large number of daily/weekly/monthly anonymous page loads/sessions).
-
A large number of concurrent anonymous users accessing the app.
-
Any soft caps on bandwidth or server requests generated by purely read-only interactions (browsing data, client-side filtering of the displayed data).
While my admin updates to the underlying Google Sheet are few and far between, I want to ensure I understand if there are any practical ceilings I might hit if the app becomes popular with many anonymous viewers, even if their interactions are all read-only and don’t involve writing data back to the sheet.
I haven’t found explicit numbers or discussions on this specific aspect in the main docs or through forum searches, which mostly focus on data update limits or signed-in user limits.
Could anyone share insights, experiences, or point me to any official clarification on how Glide handles high read-only traffic for public apps on the free tier? Are there performance considerations or other factors that might come into play beyond the documented data/update limits that I should be aware of?
Thanks so much for your time and any guidance you can offer!
Best regards,
David Lobo