POEditor uses a combination of techniques in order to mitigate abusive user behavior or faulty API scripts. We also differentiate between free and paid accounts, to ensure equitable access to resources.
Free accounts vs paid accounts
All requests are put in a queue (individual per user) and are resolved asynchronously, in the order they reached the POEditor API servers. If the queue builds up, we start dropping requests after reaching 200 requests for free accounts and paid ones. Enterprise accounts can reach 300 requests. When the limit is reached, you will receive a 429 - "Too many requests" error. We advise you to send requests one by one, even with a slight delay between them.
There are also rate limits. Free accounts can send up to 150 requests per minute, while paid plans (except Enterprise) can send up to 200 and Enterprise accounts can send up to 300 requests per minute. Per hour, the limits are 4000 requests for free accounts, 6000 requests for paid plans (other than Enterprise), and up to 10000 for Enterprise accounts. When these limits are reached, you will also receive 429 - "Too many requests" errors. Keep in mind that we count received requests, not resolved ones. So if you keep hitting the server after reaching the limits, no new request will be processed until the amount of requests you sent during the last minute/hour drops below the limit.
There is a rate limit for upload requests as well, since these are the most heavy requests we have to process. The rate is 1 upload request per 10 seconds for paid accounts and 20 for free accounts respectively.
The processed requests can be viewed in your API Log.
In a nutshell
Free accounts:
max 200 concurrent requests
max 150 requests per minute
max 4000 requests per hour
max 1 upload request per 20 seconds
Paid accounts (except Enterprise):
max 200 concurrent requests
max 200 requests per minute
max 6000 requests per hour
max 1 upload request per 10 seconds
Enterprise accounts:
max 300 concurrent requests
max 300 requests per minute
max 10000 requests per hour
max 1 upload request per 10 seconds
