Rate Limiting

Rate limits help keep the Okoora API reliable and fair for everyone. Limits apply at two levels: a monthly feature quota and a short-window burst limit. These limits work together to prevent over-use and sudden traffic spikes, similar to other major APIs.

To prevent sudden spikes, we limit how many requests you can send within a short time window.

Current burst policy:
Up to 80 requests per 5-second window, per API account.

Example:
If you send more than 80 requests within 5 seconds, additional requests are blocked until the window resets.


What happens when you exceed a limit?

When a limit is exceeded, the API returns 429 Too Many Requests


How to handle 429 responses

Recommended behavior When you receive a 429 Too Many Requests:

  • Reduce request frequency.
  • Retry after a short delay.
  • Use exponential backoff for stable recovery (for example: 1s → 2s → 4s → 8s, up to a max delay). Exponential backoff is a widely recommended pattern for rate limits.

Best practices to avoid limits

These patterns reduce the chance of hitting quotas or burst limits:

  • Avoid aggressive polling - Prefer webhooks for event updates when available.
  • Cache slow-changing data - Don’t re-fetch static or rarely-updated resources repeatedly.
  • Batch requests when possible - Group work into fewer calls instead of many small ones.
  • Ramp traffic gradually - Avoid bursts (for example when backfilling or running jobs). Spread requests over time.


What’s Next

To monitor how close you are to your quotas, continue to
Usage & Statistics
There you’ll learn how to track monthly usage and request volume per feature.

Did this page help you?