What is a rate limit?
A rate limit is how many requests a system will accept in a period, such as per minute. Exceed it and calls fail or slow down until the window resets. A quota is the sibling idea, often a longer allowance. Neither one is your monthly subscription price by itself.
Also called: quota
In plain English
The API will not answer the 500th question you asked this minute. The workflow errors. Owners see a red run and think the tool is down. It is often the limit. Usage cost is what you pay. The rate limit is how fast you may go even if you are willing to pay. A limit is the vendor saying slow down, not a moral judgment. When you hit it, the workflow should wait and retry a little later, not fire fifty more requests. Read the current limit on the plan you pay for before you promise a blast of messages at 9 a.m. Spread the work. A queue that backs up is better than a queue that gets banned.
How an owner would use it
Read the vendor's current limit before you poll or loop over a big list. Space the calls. When a run fails, look for a 'too many requests' style message before you rebuild the workflow.
Common mistakes
Retrying instantly when you are rate limited makes the limit worse. A retry needs a pause. Do not confuse a rate limit with a bug in your prompt. Do not assume a higher priced AI plan raises the other vendor's API limit. They are different companies.
A worked example
A food truck
The menu sync backed off
This is an illustration, not a customer result. A workflow asked the ordering app for every item change every few seconds and started failing at lunch. They moved it to every few minutes and only requested changes since the last success. Lunch service stopped erroring.
Related terms
Prompts and guides
Questions owners ask
What is a rate limit?
A rate limit caps how many calls you can make in a short window. Go past it and the next calls fail until the window passes.
How do I stay under a rate limit?
Slow the schedule, request only what changed, and pause before you retry a failed burst. Check the vendor's current docs for the number.
What is a quota?
A quota is usually a longer budget, such as calls per day or tokens per month. You can be under the monthly quota and still hit a per-minute rate limit.
Product guides are on AI apps for business.