Help Center/Rate Limits & Quotas

Handling 429 responses gracefully

3 min read Updated October 22, 2026

What a 429 is

HTTP 429 means you exceeded a rate-limit window. The response has a Retry-After header (seconds) and this body:

json

{
  "error": "rate_limit_exceeded",
  "message": "Rate limit exceeded: 300 requests per minute. Retry after 12s.",
  "retryAfter": 12,
  "limit": 300,
  "window": "minute",
  "environment": "production"
}

Backoff with jitter

javascript

async function callWithBackoff(url, options, maxRetries = 3) {
  for (let attempt = 0; attempt < maxRetries; attempt++) {
    const res = await fetch(url, options);
    if (res.status !== 429) return res;

    const retryAfter = res.headers.get('Retry-After');
    const baseWait = retryAfter ? Number(retryAfter) * 1000 : Math.pow(2, attempt) * 1000;
    await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, baseWait + Math.random() * 500));
  }
  throw new Error('Rate limit exceeded after max retries');
}

Nothing retries for you. Retry only 429 and 5xx responses, and never retry a 4xx validation error.

Proactive limiting

Watch X-RateLimit-Remaining and throttle before it reaches zero.

Common causes

Tight loops with no delay
Parallel workers sharing one key
Retry storms after a failure
The sandbox limit of 60 requests a minute (production allows 300)

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