Google App Engine - getting count of records that match criteria over 1000

I've read in multiple locations that GAE lifted the 1000 record limit on queries and counts, however, I can only seem to get a count of the records up to 1000. I won't be pulling more than 1000 queries at a time, but the requirements are such that I need a count of the matching records.

I understand you can use cursors to "paginate" through the dataset, but to cycle through just to get a count seems a bit much. Presumably when they said they "lifted" the limit, it was the hard limit - you still need to cycle through the results 1000 at a time, am I correct?

Should I be using a method other than the .all()/filter method to generate 1000+ counts?

Thanks in advance for all your help!