Rate limits & quotas

Every authenticated API request is subject to two limits, both set by your plan:

• A per-second rate limit - how many requests you can make in any one second.
• A monthly credit quota - one credit is one job returned; your plan sets how many credits you get per calendar month.

How usage is counted

One credit is one job returned. A response carrying twenty-five postings costs twenty-five credits; a response carrying one costs one. Estimate the jobs you consume, not the calls you make.

Three rules follow from that, and they are the ones people ask about:

• A search that matches nothing costs nothing. No rows, no charge.
• Re-pulling a job you have already seen charges again. The meter counts rows delivered, not distinct ids, so page with cursor rather than re-running a query if you want to avoid paying twice.
• Preview mode is free. Send blur_company_data: true and the employer name, domain, links and description come back masked while titles, locations, salary and metadata.total_results stay readable - at no credit cost, whatever the row count. Use it to size a search before paying for it.

Endpoints that do not return jobs (/v1/stack/scan, /v1/insights, /v1/companies) cost 1 credit per call.

Quotas reset at the start of each calendar month (UTC). Track consumption via GET /api/users/me or the dashboard Usage page.

What happens at the limit

• Exceed the per-second rate → 429 Rate limit exceeded. Back off and retry - see error handling.
• Exhaust the monthly quota → 402 Monthly request quota exceeded. Wait for the reset or upgrade.