Storage and AI limits: what to do when you hit one

Three separate limits can stop you, and they behave differently. This article covers what each message means.

"You have reached your storage limit"

Storage is a standing total of your uploaded files. It does not reset monthly — you have to free space or upgrade.

You may also see the earlier warning "You are approaching your storage limit. Consider upgrading."

How to free space, most effective first:

1. Empty the Bin. Binned notes still hold their files. Emptying it is the action that actually reclaims storage. This is permanent.

2. Find large attachments. Open Files, sort by Largest, and remove big files from the notes that use them.

3. Wait out version retention. A file still referenced by a note version is kept until those versions age out at 30 days.

4. Upgrade for more room — Free 1 GB, Pro 10 GB, Ultra 50 GB.

Notes themselves are tiny. Storage pressure is essentially always files.

"File is too large"

This is the per-file limit, separate from your total: 25 MB on Free, 250 MB on Pro, 500 MB on Ultra. You may see "File size exceeds the allowed limit" or a message naming the actual and maximum size.

Even with storage free, a single file above the cap is rejected. Compress it, or upgrade. Images are compressed automatically, so this usually means video or a large PDF.

"You have reached your AI chat token limit"

AI token allowances reset at the start of each calendar month — nothing to clean up.

Two separate budgets:

• Chat tokens — spent on conversations

• Embedding tokens — spent indexing notes for semantic search

You will get warnings before you run out, telling you what percentage of your monthly allowance you have used.

When chat tokens run out, chat pauses until the reset or an upgrade. When embedding tokens run out, new notes are not indexed for semantic search — keyword search keeps working, and indexing resumes at the reset.

The biggest consumer of embedding tokens by far is a large import, which indexes every note at once. Ordinary writing uses very little.

Check both in Settings → Billing, which shows progress bars and the reset date.

"Too many requests. Please wait a moment and try again"

A rate limit, not a quota. The one you may hit in normal use is AI chat: 10 requests per minute. Wait a moment and continue.

You may also see this on verification or password-reset emails, which allow 3 every 5 minutes per address. If an email has not arrived, check your spam folder before requesting another — repeated requests will lock you out of requesting for a few minutes.

"Import exceeded your storage limit"

An import that would exceed your storage is rejected entirely, before anything is written. You do not get a half-imported archive.

Free space first, or export a smaller batch from Notion, Evernote or Obsidian and import in stages. See Import notes from Notion, Evernote or Obsidian.

Which limits reset

Full details: Plans, limits, and billing.

After downgrading

Your notes and files are never deleted for being over a limit. You simply cannot upload until you are back under it.