Rate Limits

Rate limits protect the API from abuse and ensure fair usage across all users.

Limits by plan

| Plan | Requests/month | Burst rate (req/min) | |---|---|---| | Free | 500 | 10 | | Starter | 5,000 | 30 | | Growth | 25,000 | 60 | | Scale | 100,000 | 120 |

Rate limit headers

Every API response includes rate limit information:

| Header | Description | |---|---| | X-RateLimit-Limit | Maximum requests per minute for your plan | | X-RateLimit-Remaining | Requests remaining in the current window | | X-RateLimit-Reset | Unix timestamp when the window resets |

When you hit the limit

You'll receive a 429 Too Many Requests response:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "rate_limited",
    "message": "Rate limit exceeded"
  }
}

Handling rate limits

Exponential backoff

import time
import requests

def classify_with_retry(email, api_key, max_retries=3):
    for attempt in range(max_retries):
        response = requests.get(
            "https://api.emailclassifier.com/v1/classify",
            params={"email": email},
            headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {api_key}"}
        )
        if response.status_code != 429:
            return response.json()

        wait = 2 ** attempt
        time.sleep(wait)

    raise Exception("Rate limit exceeded after retries")

Check headers proactively

const response = await fetch(url, { headers });
const remaining = response.headers.get('X-RateLimit-Remaining');

if (parseInt(remaining) < 5) {
  // Slow down requests
  await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 1000));
}

Monthly quota

When your monthly quota is reached, all requests return 429 until the next billing cycle. You can:

1. Upgrade your plan for more requests
2. Wait until the next month for the quota to reset
3. Monitor usage in your Dashboard to avoid surprises