rate_limited (429)¶

The caller is over the rate limit for its key kind.

Cause¶

Two tiers, and they are different animals. The public sandbox key is unregistered and shared, so its bucket is keyed by client address over a long window. It exists to keep one visitor from consuming the demo for everybody else. A registered key is metered by its own balance, so its limit only keeps a runaway client from flooding the service. That one is per key, over a short window.

The figures are on limits.

The message¶

The wording depends on which of the cases above it was.

Rate limit exceeded; retry later.
Sandbox limit of 10 requests per hour per IP reached.

The fix¶

Wait for the window to pass, then retry. Honor the Retry-After header where the response carries one, rather than retrying on a tighter loop.

A registered key has its own, much shorter window than the public sandbox.

event_id¶

event_id is always null on this code. It is a refusal the caller is meant to handle, so nothing is recorded as a failure to look at. The service answers and writes one log line.

registration_required — the anonymous allowance is spent.
document_repeated — the same image, too many times.

The whole catalogue, grouped by what a caller does with it, is on errors.

The response¶

{
  "error": {
    "code": "rate_limited",
    "message": "Rate limit exceeded; retry later.",
    "docs_url": "https://doc.cheap/docs/errors/rate_limited",
    "request_id": "req_9e6b1f7c-2d4a-4b83-9c51-7f0ad3e8b642",
    "event_id": null
  }
}