429 Too Many Requests

A 429 Too Many Requests error means the user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time and is being rate limited. The server is protecting itself from being overwhelmed by throttling the client. For developers, this indicates your application needs to slow down, implement backoff strategies, and respect the rate limits published by the API provider.

Common causes

• Exceeding the API provider's published rate limit for requests per second or per minute
• Running parallel requests or batch jobs without throttling or concurrency limits
• A retry loop without backoff logic is hammering the server after transient failures
• Multiple clients or services sharing the same API key and collectively exceeding the limit
• Automated scripts, crawlers, or bots sending requests faster than the server allows

How to fix it

• Check the Retry-After response header to know exactly how long to wait before retrying
• Implement exponential backoff with jitter in your retry logic to spread out retried requests
• Add request queuing or throttling in your client to stay within published rate limits
• Cache responses where possible to reduce the total number of requests made to the API
• Contact the API provider to request a higher rate limit if your usage legitimately requires it

Related HTTP errors