429 Too Many Requests

What does 429 Too Many Requests mean?

You have sent too many requests in a given amount of time and are being rate limited. It belongs to the 4xx Client Error class, which means the request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled. Something about the request needs to change.

When do APIs return 429?

Exceeding an API quota, often from a retry loop or an unthrottled batch job.

How to fix a 429 Too Many Requests

Check the Retry-After header and wait that long before retrying. Implement exponential backoff with jitter rather than retrying immediately, and watch X-RateLimit-Remaining to back off before you hit the wall.

Reproduce a 429 response

The fastest way to understand a status code is to trigger one and read the full response. Open the API tester and send a request to https://httpbin.org/status/429 — you will see the 429 status along with every response header the server sent. Comparing those headers against a working request is often what reveals the cause.

When you are debugging a real endpoint, check the response headers as carefully as the body, and confirm you are using the right HTTP method for the operation.

Related 4xx status codes