FCM Capacity Calculator

Firebase Cloud Messaging — per-Project Rate Limits & Scale Planning (as of 2025)

⚡ FCM Hard Limits — Know These Before You Scale
$0 / message
FCM notifications are completely free — no per-message charge on any plan, any volume
Per Account
600,000 / min
Maximum messages per minute across your entire Firebase project. HTTP 429 if exceeded.
Per Firebase Project
5,000 / hr
Max messages to a single Android device per hour. Google may mark app abusive if sustained.
Per Device (Android)
240 / min
Max messages to a single Android device per minute. Hard throttle per device.
Per Device (Android)
Burst 20
Collapsible (silent) messages: burst of 20 per app per device, then +1 refill every 3 minutes.
Per Device · Collapsible
+25% max
Quota increase possible if you hit ≥80% for 5+ consecutive minutes daily. Requires 15-day notice.
Increase Request

⚠ All limits are per Firebase Project, not per user or per FCM service globally. iOS limits are additionally governed by Apple's APNs and are separate. Limits reset every minute (not clock-aligned).

Quick Scenarios

Your Parameters

users
/ month
≈ 10 per day · 0.4 per hour
hrs/day
%

Firebase Plan

FCM messages are free on both plans. If you send from your own backend server (.NET, Node, etc.), the FCM API costs nothing regardless of plan.

Monthly Volume Summary

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Total messages / month
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Total messages / day
—
Projected / year
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Peak msgs / minute rate limit
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Msgs / hr per device rate limit
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Concurrent active users
Project Rate — peak msgs/min vs 600K/min limit 0%
Per-Device Rate — msgs/hr per device vs 5,000/hr limit 0%
LimitFCM Hard ValueYour UsageStatus
FCM Cost
Per message sent		 FREE — always $0 ✓ Free
Project Rate Limit
All msgs/min across your project
PER FIREBASE PROJECT 		600,000 / min — —
Per-Device Rate (Android)
Max to one device
PER DEVICE 		240 / min
5,000 / hr		 — —
Collapsible Messages
Silent/data messages per app per device		 Burst 20
+1 per 3 min refill		 — Design aware
iOS (APNs)
Apple controls these separately		 Apple set — Check APNs docs

💡 Rate limits reset every minute (not clock-aligned — so a spike at :59 counts with :00).
📈 Quota increase request requires ≥80% sustained for 5+ consecutive minutes daily + <5% client error rate.
🔁 Limits are per Firebase Project — if you have multiple apps sharing one project, they share the quota.

🎉
FCM messages are completely free. No charge per notification regardless of volume — 1 or 1 billion per month.

Costs only arise from adjacent infrastructure used to trigger notifications:

ComponentSpark Free TierBlaze Paid
FCM Messages ∞ Free ∞ Free
Your Own Backend Server
.NET, Node, etc. calling FCM HTTP API		 Your hosting cost Your hosting cost
Cloud Functions
If triggering via Firebase Functions		 2M invocations/mo free $0.40 / million after free tier
Firestore triggers
If watching DB to send notifs		 50K reads/day free $0.06 / 100K reads

Max users supportable at various notification rates before hitting FCM project rate limit (600K msgs/min). Your current setting is highlighted.

Notifs/User/Month ≈ per day Max Users (project rate) Per-Device OK? Bottleneck

Assumes 20% concurrent users active over 12h/day.
Project limit: 600K msgs/min. Device limit: 5,000 msgs/hr per device.