Rate Limits

Overview

Rate limits protect the API from excessive usage and ensure fair access for all users. Limits are applied per API key and vary by plan.

Limits by Plan

Rate Limit Headers

Every API response includes headers that tell you your current rate-limit status:

X-RateLimit-Limit: 120
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 87
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1706900400

Handling 429 Responses

When you exceed the rate limit, the API responds with HTTP 429 Too Many Requests:

{
  "success": false,
  "error": "Rate limit exceeded. Retry after 12 seconds."
}

Read the Retry-After header and wait before making another request.

Best Practices

• Monitor headers — Check X-RateLimit-Remaining and slow down before hitting zero
• Exponential backoff — On 429 errors, wait 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s before retrying
• Queue requests — For batch generation, use a job queue to throttle requests
• Cache results — Don't re-generate the same document repeatedly; cache the PDF URL
• Use webhooks — For async generation, receive completion events instead of polling

Next Steps

• Error Handling — Handle all API errors
• Pagination — Efficiently fetch large result sets
• Usage & Quotas — Monitor your usage