What Is a Rate Limit?
A rate limit is a cap on how many requests you can make to a service or API within a set period, such as a number of calls per minute. It protects the service from overload and shares capacity fairly across everyone using it, and it is common on AI model APIs.
How a rate limit works
A rate limit tracks how many requests an account or key sends over a window of time and blocks anything above the allowed amount. Go over the limit and the service returns an error rather than handling the request, usually asking you to wait and try again. For AI APIs, limits are often set on both the number of requests and the number of tokens processed, since both consume capacity.
Limits are usually tied to a plan or tier, so higher tiers allow more. Applications handle them by spacing out requests, retrying after a short wait, and queuing work so they stay under the cap rather than hitting errors.
Why rate limits matter for AI
Rate limits matter because they shape how an application built on an AI service behaves under load. An app that ignores them will start failing when traffic rises, so handling limits gracefully, with retries and queuing, is part of building something dependable. They also affect cost and capacity planning, since the limit caps how much work can flow through at once.
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What happens when you hit a rate limit?
Why do rate limits exist?
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