Rate limits & errors

Limits

Reads are capped at 120 requests per minute per key. Go over that and you get a 429 with a Retry-After: 60 header.

Export creation is capped separately at 4 per hour. Go over that and you get a 429 with a Retry-After: 900 header. Polling and downloading an export are not counted against this limit.

Reads never consume your article quota - that only meters articles the pipeline produces, not API calls.

The error envelope

Every error response is JSON, shaped the same way regardless of status code:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "rate_limited",
    "message": "Too many requests. Try again in 60 seconds."
  }
}

Status codes