Rate limits & quotas

Rate limits

Applied per API key, sliding window:

Class	Limit	Covers
`reads`	600/min	All GETs
`writes`	300/min	POST/DELETE except analysis creation
`analyses.create`	60/min	`POST /v1/analyses`

Plan multipliers can raise these. Every response — including 429s — carries:

X-RateLimit-Limit: 600
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 597
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1751980860

A 429 adds Retry-After (integer seconds, ≥ 1). Honor it — the SDKs do automatically.

{ "error": { "code": "rate_limit_exceeded", "status": 429, "message": "Rate limit exceeded. Back off per Retry-After." } }

Concurrency limits

Separate from request rates: your plan caps simultaneous running analyses. Exceeding it returns 429 concurrency_limit_exceeded — wait for an active analysis to finish rather than backing off blindly.

Quotas (metered limits)

Quotas are about how much you process, not how fast you call. Exceeding a metered limit returns 429 quota_exceeded with details.meter naming the meter. Check consumption any time:

curl -s https://api.primateintelligence.ai/v1/usage \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PRIMATE_API_KEY"

{
  "meters": [
    { "meter": "credit_seconds", "unit": "seconds", "balance": 5990 },
    { "meter": "seconds_processed.period", "unit": "seconds", "used": 10, "resets_at": "2026-08-01T00:00:00Z" }
  ]
}

Running out of credits is 402 insufficient_credits (not 429) — see billing & credits.

Capacity

Under platform-wide pressure new creates may get 503 capacity_exhausted with Retry-After while in-flight work drains. Test-mode traffic is never shed (it doesn't touch the GPU). See service expectations.

Client checklist

Honor Retry-After on every 429/503 — never hammer
Watch X-RateLimit-Remaining and pre-throttle when it gets low
Treat concurrency_limit_exceeded as "wait for completion", not "back off"
Treat quota_exceeded/insufficient_credits as account states — alert a human, don't retry
Single region (us-west-2) in v1 — no cross-region limit ambiguity