Hi all
I'm building an app on the Dropbox API and need a definitive answer on how daily sharing bandwidth is attributed in one specific shared-folder scenario. I've laid the setup out below with labelled accounts to remove any ambiguity.
Setup
- Account O ("owner"): an end user's Dropbox account that owns a folder of files.
- Account S ("service account"): my app's single dedicated Dropbox account.
- Account O shares its folder with Account S, so S is a collaborator/member on that shared folder. S does not own the files; O does.
- My app, authenticated as Account S, calls /2/files/get_temporary_link on files inside that shared folder.
- The temporary link returned is handed to end-user devices that are NOT authenticated to Dropbox at all (no linked account, no OAuth). They simply download the file bytes directly from the temporary link's URL.
- In production there are many such owner accounts (one per customer), each sharing a folder with the same single service account S. That's what makes this question consequential for me.
What I already understand
- Traffic from get_temporary_link links is subject to the daily bandwidth limit.
- The bandwidth limit is daily and account-wide (e.g. 20 GB / 1 TB / 4 TB per day depending on plan), not per-link.
My question
When those unauthenticated downloads occur, whose daily bandwidth quota is consumed — the owner account O (which stores the files), or the service account S (which minted the link)? Or is it counted against both?
Secondary clarifications, if they affect the answer
- Does it depend on whether O and S are on different plan tiers (e.g. O on Basic, S on Advanced)?
- Does it depend on whether S has the shared folder mounted vs. unmounted in its account?
- Is the attribution the same for a link minted via get_temporary_link as for a shared link created with sharing/create_shared_link_with_settings?
This is a fairly fundamental architecture question for my app so any help from the community here would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
