API Rate Limiting

By default, the test environment has 50% of the rate limit of the live environment.

To maintain optimal performance, an API rate limit limits the number of requests a client can make within a specific time frame. The Highnote platform has different rate limit types:

• Request
• Complexity

Rate limiting is based on which type you hit first. Each type has a specific rate limit for each Auth/API type:

For more information on calculating request complexity, see Request Complexity.

If your request is rate limited, the Highnote API will return a 429 TOO MANY REQUESTS status code.

If you exceed the API rate limit, the cost field will not be present in your API response. Instead of giving the query cost, the Highnote API uses a retryAfter field to show how long to wait before retrying.

The following example represents a response of a rate-limited API request:

Refer to the following best practices to avoid hitting rate limits:

• Avoid polling: Avoid polling the API for asynchronous updates by registering a webhook target to receive notification events. To learn more, see Notifications.
• Use pagination: When querying for listed data, use pagination to limit the number of requested items.
• Implement exponential backoff: Implement retries with exponential backoff when an API request receives a 429 TOO MANY REQUESTS response. Use the following resources to implement exponential backoff:
  • Implementing Exponential Backoff
  • Apollo Client Retry Link
  • Exponential Backoff npm package