Rate Limits

Rate limits protect your search API from abuse and ensure fair usage. Configure limits per site in your dashboard.

Default Limits

Configuring Limits

In your site settings:

1. Go to Settings tab
2. Scroll to Rate Limits
3. Adjust the values as needed
4. Click Save

How Rate Limiting Works

We use a sliding window algorithm:

1. Each request increments a counter for the current minute
2. If the counter exceeds the limit, requests are rejected
3. Counters reset automatically after 60 seconds

Rate Limit Headers

API responses include rate limit information:

X-RateLimit-Limit: 60
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 45
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1702500060

Handling 429 Errors

When rate limited, the API returns:

HTTP 429 Too Many Requests

{
  "error": "Rate limit exceeded",
  "retryAfter": 30
}

Best practices for handling rate limits:

• Check the retryAfter value and wait before retrying
• Implement exponential backoff for repeated failures
• Cache search results client-side when possible
• Debounce search input to reduce requests

Per-IP Limiting

The per-IP limit prevents a single user from consuming all your quota. We detect the real client IP even through proxies using the X-Forwarded-For header.

CloudFront Caching

GET search requests are cached at the edge by CloudFront for 60 seconds. This means:

• Repeated identical searches don't count against rate limits
• Response times are faster for cached queries
• POST requests bypass the cache

Plan Limits

In addition to per-minute rate limits, your plan has monthly quotas:

Monitor your usage in the dashboard. You'll receive email notifications when approaching your limits.