The maximum number of outstanding messages per streaming pull.
The Cloud Pub/Sub C++ client library uses streaming pull requests to receive messages from the service. The service will stop delivering messages if this many messages or more have neither been acknowledged nor rejected.
If a negative or 0 value is supplied, the number of messages will be unlimited.
Example
namespace pubsub = ::google::cloud::pubsub;
using ::google::cloud::future;
using ::google::cloud::Options;
using ::google::cloud::StatusOr;
auto sample = [](std::string project_id, std::string subscription_id) {
// Change the flow control watermarks, by default the client library uses
// 0 and 1,000 for the message count watermarks, and 0 and 10MiB for the
// size watermarks. Recall that the library stops requesting messages if
// any of the high watermarks are reached, and the library resumes
// requesting messages when *both* low watermarks are reached.
auto constexpr kMiB = 1024 * 1024L;
auto subscriber = pubsub::Subscriber(pubsub::MakeSubscriberConnection(
pubsub::Subscription(std::move(project_id), std::move(subscription_id)),
Options{}
.set<pubsub::MaxOutstandingMessagesOption>(1000)
.set<pubsub::MaxOutstandingBytesOption>(8 * kMiB)));
auto session = subscriber.Subscribe(
[](pubsub::Message const& m, pubsub::AckHandler h) {
std::move(h).ack();
std::cout << "Received message " << m << "\n";
PleaseIgnoreThisSimplifiesTestingTheSamples();
});
return std::make_pair(subscriber, std::move(session));
};
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eThis document outlines the \u003ccode\u003eMaxOutstandingMessagesOption\u003c/code\u003e for the Google Cloud Pub/Sub C++ client library, which controls the maximum number of unacknowledged messages during streaming pull operations.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe latest version available is 2.37.0-rc, and the content details this option across multiple versions, ranging back to 2.11.0.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eSetting \u003ccode\u003eMaxOutstandingMessagesOption\u003c/code\u003e to a negative or zero value effectively disables the message count limit, allowing unlimited outstanding messages.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe library uses flow control watermarks for both message count and size, stopping message requests if high watermarks are reached, and resuming when both low watermarks are reached.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003e\u003ccode\u003eMaxOutstandingMessagesOption\u003c/code\u003e is a type alias for \u003ccode\u003estd::int64_t\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]