Google allows users to store up to 15GB of data per account. That may seem generous, but photos, old messages, and documents stored on Google Drive can eat up space quickly. Here’s what’s included in your storage limit, how to find out how much of your allotted Google storage you’re using, and how much space you have left.

Before you learn how to check your Google data limit, it's helpful to know what is and isn't included.

Each email message has a small data footprint, but you probably have a lot of messages stored in your account. In addition, some messages have attachments that take up extra space.

These factors add up, as is true for any email service, but especially Gmail. Google makes it easier to archive emails than to delete them, so messages you think you’ve deleted may be archived and taking up space.