API Rate Limit

The maximum number of requests you can make to an API within a specific time window, set by the API provider to prevent abuse and control costs.

Hitting rate limits causes your app to stop working, requests fail and users see errors. Understanding rate limits helps you design features that stay within them, implement queuing, or cache responses.

A founder's app hits the OpenAI rate limit during a traffic spike. Her developer adds request queuing, when the limit is approached, requests are held briefly and retried, users see a brief delay instead of an error.