Throttling and rate limiting
The API throttles incoming requests to prevent abuse and ensure fair use.
When an application exceeds the rate limit, the API will return a standard HTTP 429 Too Many Requests response.
How to handle being throttled
The specific details of rate limit policies in effect may vary without notice. Application developers should implement detection and handling of rate-limiting behavior using X-Ratelimit-* headers described below.
When a request from your application receives a 429 Too many Requests response, you can check the returned HTTP headers to see your current rate limit status:
X-RateLimit-Limit:120
X-RateLimit-Remaining:0
X-RateLimit-Reset:1482966442The X-RateLimit-Reset provides the time at which the current rate limit window resets in UTC epoch seconds.
// pseudo-code
MAX_RETRIES = 25
retry_count = 0
while(running == true) {
response = get_api_response(request_params)
// if the server throttled the request, re-try until a valid
// response is received or a maximum number of re-try attempts
// have been reached
//
while(response.status == 429 && retry_count < MAX_RETRIES) {
// extract the Time in X-RateLimit-Reset
x_rate_limit_reset_time = get_x_rate_limit_reset(response)
// wait until the rate limit time window has been reset
wait_until(x_rate_limit_reset_time)
// retry the call
response = get_api_response(request_params)
retry_count += 1
}
handle_response(response)
retry_count = 0
}