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Rate limits in the API

Buttondown enforces two types of rate limits:

EndpointRate limit
All API endpoints600 requests per minute
POST /v1/subscribers100 requests per day
info

Newsletters on paid plans with permanently active status are exempt from these rate limits.

Rate limit headers

Buttondown returns rate limit information in the response headers on every API request:

HeaderDescription
X-RateLimit-LimitThe maximum number of requests allowed in the current window
X-RateLimit-RemainingThe number of requests remaining in the current window
X-RateLimit-ResetUnix timestamp (in seconds) when the rate limit window resets

Here's an example of the headers you might see:

X-RateLimit-Limit: 600
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 595
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1735776060

Exceeding the rate limit

If you exceed the rate limit, the API will return a 429 status code with a Retry-After header indicating how many seconds to wait before retrying:

HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Retry-After: 45
X-RateLimit-Limit: 600
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 0
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1735776060

You can use these headers to implement backoff logic in your client code.