Report streaming using GoogleAdsService

To retrieve Google Ads API entities and reporting data, use one of these methods:

• GoogleAdsService.SearchStream
• GoogleAdsService.Search

Here are the high-level distinctions for the two methods:

	GoogleAdsService.SearchStream	GoogleAdsService.Search
Suitable for production code	Yes	Yes
Service	GoogleAdsService	GoogleAdsService
Scenario	Fetching objects and reports	Fetching objects and reports
Response	Stream of GoogleAdsRow objects	Pages of GoogleAdsRow objects
Response's fields	Only those specified in the query	Only those specified in the query
Daily limits	Daily limits based on access levels	Daily limits based on access levels

SearchStream versus Search

While Search can send multiple paginated requests to download the entire report, SearchStream sends a single request and initiates a persistent connection with the Google Ads API regardless of report size.

For SearchStream , data packets start to download immediately with the entire result cached in a data buffer. Your code can start reading the buffered data without having to wait for the entire stream to finish.

By eliminating the round-trip network time required to request each individual page of a Search response, depending on your app, SearchStream can offer improved performance over paging, especially for bigger reports.

Example

This example looks at a report that consists of 100,000 rows. The following table breaks down the accounting differences between the two methods.

	SearchStream	Search
Page size	Not Applicable	10,000 rows per page
Number of API requests	1 request	10 requests
Number of API responses	1 continuous stream	10 responses

Performance factors

For most use cases, we recommend SearchStream over Search for the following reasons:

• For single page reports (under 10,000 rows): No significant performance differences between the two methods.

• For multiple page reports: SearchStream is typically faster since multiple round trips are avoided, and reading or writing from disk cache is less of a factor.

Rate limits

Daily limits for both methods adhere to the standard limits and access levels of your developer token. A single query or report is counted as one operation regardless of the result being paged or streamed.