Navigating MEGA’s rate limits with rclone is a smart move. MEGA is notoriously sensitive to high-concurrency connections and rapid-fire API requests, which can lead to temporary IP bans or “Request Over Limit” errors.

To balance safety and speed, you’ll primarily use three flags: --bwlimit, --transfers, and --checkers.

1. Limiting Upload Speed (Bandwidth)

The --bwlimit flag is your primary tool for “per unit of time” restrictions. It controls the total bandwidth used.

• Format: --bwlimit (e.g., 4M for 4 Megabytes/s).

• Time-based limits: You can even set a schedule if you want to be stealthy during the day and faster at night.

Example: --bwlimit “08:00,512k 23:00,10M”

(512KB/s during the day, 10MB/s at night)

2. Parallelism (Transfers and Checkers)

To avoid bans, you need to limit how many files are being processed at once.

• --transfers: The number of files being uploaded in parallel.

• --checkers: The number of parallel “checks” rclone does to see if a file already exists on the destination. MEGA’s API often chokes on high checker counts.

3. Recommended Profiles

Here are three tiers of settings to help you stay under the radar while moving your data.

Tier 1: The “Stealth” Limit (Safest)

Use this if you have already been banned once or have a massive amount of very small files. This mimics a single-user upload.

• Transfers: 1

• Checkers: 2

• Bandwidth: 1MB/s

rclone copy /local/path mega:remote/path --transfers 1 --checkers 2 --bwlimit 1M

rclone copy /local/path mega:remote/path --transfers 1 --checkers 2 --bwlimit 1M

Tier 2: The “Safe Middle Ground” (Recommended)

This is usually the “sweet spot” for MEGA. It provides decent speed without triggering aggressive anti-flood protections.

• Transfers: 3

• Checkers: 4

• Bandwidth: 4MB/s

rclone copy /local/path mega:remote/path --transfers 3 --checkers 4 --bwlimit 4M

rclone copy /local/path mega:remote/path --transfers 3 --checkers 4 --bwlimit 4M

Tier 3: The “Intermediate” Limit

Use this if you have a stable connection and larger files (where the overhead of starting a new upload is low).

• Transfers: 5

• Checkers: 8

• Bandwidth: 10MB/s

rclone copy /local/path mega:remote/path --transfers 5 --checkers 8 --bwlimit 10M

rclone copy /local/path mega:remote/path --transfers 5 --checkers 8 --bwlimit 10M

Pro-Tips for MEGA

1. Use --tpslimit: This is the “secret sauce” for MEGA. It limits Transactions Per Second to the API. Adding --tpslimit 3 will prevent rclone from spamming MEGA’s servers too quickly.

2. Avoid Small Files: If you have thousands of tiny files, MEGA will likely throttle you regardless of speed. Consider zipping small folders before uploading.

3. The --fast-list Flag: Do not use this with MEGA. It attempts to load the entire file list into memory via specific API calls that can often trigger “Too Many Requests” errors on large accounts.

How large are the files you’re typically moving—are we talking about a few big movies or thousands of tiny documents?