Rate Limits and Quotas

API rate limits are the number of requests that you can make to the API within a specific time frame. The rate limits are set to ensure that the API is available to all users and to prevent abuse. If you exceed the rate limit, you will receive an error response with the status code 429 Too Many Requests.

TIP

The rate limits for the APITube News API are based on the plan you are subscribed to. You can view the rate limits for each plan below.

Rate limits

Rate limits are counted per API key in a rolling 1-minute window.

Plan	Rate limit
Free	10 requests per minute, results limited to the first 5 pages
Basic / Professional / Corporate	50 requests per minute

All paid plans (Basic, Professional and Corporate) share the same 50 requests per minute limit — the difference between them is quota and features, not request throughput. On the Free plan, requesting page 6 or beyond returns a 400 error with code ER0173.

Exceeding the per-minute limit returns a 429 error with code ER0203. Repeatedly exceeding it gets the key temporarily banned, returning 429 with code ER0204 until the ban window passes.

Fact Check

The Fact Check endpoint (/v1/fact-check) has its own, stricter limit of 10 requests per minute — separate from the plan rate limit above — because every request runs language-model inference. It is also not available on the Free plan. Exceeding it returns a 429 error with code ER0203.

SSE Stream Connections

Each plan has a limit on the number of concurrent SSE stream connections:

Plan	Max SSE Connections
Free	0
Basic	2
Professional	10
Corporate	50

If you exceed the limit, the API will return a 429 error with code ER0360.

Monitoring Rate Limits

APITube News API uses HTTP headers to provide information about your current rate limit status. The following headers are included in every API response:

Header	Description
X-RateLimit-Limit	The maximum number of requests you can make in the current time window
X-RateLimit-Remaining	The number of requests remaining in the current time window
X-RateLimit-Reset	The number of seconds remaining until the rate limit resets

Example (a paid plan with a 50 requests-per-minute limit):

X-RateLimit-Limit: 50
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 49
X-RateLimit-Reset: 32

Pay-as-you-go spending limit

If you use pay-as-you-go billing, you can set an optional monthly spending limit on your account from the dashboard. It caps how much of your prepaid balance can be spent within a calendar month (UTC) — useful to protect your balance from an unexpected usage spike.

When a limit is configured, every response includes the remaining budget for the current month:

Header	Description
X-Budget-Remaining	Remaining monthly pay-as-you-go budget, in cents. Present only when a limit is set.

Example (50000 cents = $500 left this month):

X-Budget-Remaining: 50000

Once the monthly limit is reached, requests that would be billed to your balance are rejected with 402 and error code ER0177 until the limit resets at the start of the next month, or you raise/remove it in the dashboard. Requests covered by your plan quota are not affected.