Understanding APITube rate limits#

APITube enforces two separate ceilings on your account: a rate limit that caps how fast you can call the API, and a credit quota that caps how many requests you can make in total. The rate limit on a paid-plan API key is 50 requests per minute (the free plan is limited to 10 per minute) and resets every minute. It is independent of your plan’s quota, and a request blocked by the rate limit never deducts a credit.

Keeping these two limits straight matters for billing: hitting the rate limit slows you down for a few seconds, while exhausting your quota stops you until the quota resets or you top up.

What is a rate limit, and how is it different from my quota?#

A rate limit is a speed cap. It counts requests in a one-minute window and rejects anything over the cap so that a single key cannot flood the service. A quota is a volume cap — the total number of requests included in your plan, drawn down one credit at a time as you make calls.

The two limits behave differently:

• The rate limit resets every minute. Going over it returns 429 and costs nothing — the check runs before the request is processed, so no credit is spent.
• The credit quota is your plan’s overall allowance. When it runs out you get a different error: 402 with code ER0176 (“You have no points on your account.”), not a 429. See what counts as one request and what happens when you run out of requests.

So a 429 means “you’re calling too quickly, wait a moment”, while a 402 ER0176 means “you’ve used up your plan’s requests”.

What are APITube’s per-minute rate limits?#

The limits are counted in a one-minute window, per API key, and differ by key type:

• Paid-plan keys — 50 requests per minute; free-plan keys — 10 per minute.
• Test keys — 15 requests per minute. Test data does not draw down your quota, so the rate limit is the only safeguard on test keys and is set lower.
• Fact-check (/v1/fact-check) — 10 requests per minute, on its own counter separate from the 50-per-minute pool, because each call runs a language model.

The counter is keyed on the API key, so every request carrying the same key shares one budget; your IP address is used only as a fallback when no key is present. The per-minute cap does not rise on more expensive plans — Basic, Professional and Corporate share the same 50/min ceiling, and the free plan is lower at 10/min. Paid plans raise your credit quota, not the per-minute speed.

How do I know how close I am to the limit?#

Every response carries rate-limit headers you can read to pace your traffic:

• x-ratelimit-limit — your per-minute ceiling (for example, 50).
• x-ratelimit-remaining — calls left in the current window.
• x-ratelimit-reset — seconds until the window resets.

When a request is rejected, the response adds a retry-after header with the number of seconds to wait. A blocked response looks like this:

HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
retry-after: 27
x-ratelimit-limit: 50
x-ratelimit-remaining: 0
x-ratelimit-reset: 27

Watch x-ratelimit-remaining and slow down before it reaches 0, instead of waiting for the 429.

What happens when I exceed the rate limit?#

Going over the cap returns HTTP 429 with code ER0203 and a message that states your ceiling and how long to wait — for example, “Rate limit exceeded. You can make 50 requests per minute. Try again in 1 minute.” If you keep sending requests after that — 30 over-limit responses — the key is temporarily banned and returns 429 with code ER0204 instead. The ban is temporary and clears after the interval named in the message.

The fix for both is the same: stop, read the wait time, and back off before retrying. For backoff patterns and a full breakdown of ER0203 versus ER0204, see how to fix rate-limit (429) errors. The official parameter reference lives at docs.apitube.io.

Common Questions#

• Do rate limits use up my credits?
• Are rate limits higher on paid plans?
• Do test keys and live keys share the same limit?
• Is the rate limit separate from running out of requests?

Do rate limits use up my credits?#

No. The rate-limit check runs before a request is processed, so a 429 (either ER0203 or ER0204) does not deduct a credit from your quota. Only requests that are actually processed and returned count against your plan.

Are rate limits higher on paid plans?#

No. The per-minute rate limit is 50 requests per minute on the paid plans (the free plan is limited to 10/min); it does not rise with a more expensive plan. Upgrading raises your overall credit quota — the total number of requests you can make — not the per-minute speed. If you need more throughput at once, spread work across multiple API keys, since the limit is counted per key.

Do test keys and live keys share the same limit?#

No. A paid-plan key gets 50 requests per minute, a free-plan key gets 10, a test key gets 15 per minute, and /v1/fact-check has its own 10-per-minute counter. Each is tracked separately, so a test key hitting its limit never affects a live key, and fact-check calls never block your other News API requests.

Is the rate limit separate from running out of requests?#

Yes. They are two different ceilings with two different errors. The rate limit returns 429 (ER0203/ER0204) and resets every minute. Running out of your plan’s requests returns 402 ER0176 and stays until your quota resets or you top up. A 429 is a short pause; a 402 ER0176 means your quota is empty.