Rate limit

What is an API rate limit?

An API rate limit is a threshold placed on the number of API calls that can be placed over a period of time. For example: you may only mayke 3 login attempts an hour, or make 150 calls to Twitter every 5 minutes.

API services have upper limits on the number of requests that can be handled every second (millisecond). If one user (or several users) begin taking a substantial portion of the available bandwidth of the API - the API will fail to work for others, By placing limits on individual users, API developers can protect their infrastructure from too many requests.

Rate limits can also affect bandwidth. For those in the USA, your "unlimited 4G data" mobile data plan is typically 25 or 40 GB at 4G speeds, and then you are rate limited - your plan is throttled to 2g for the rest of the month.

Rate limits at api.video

We currently have no rate limits on our API, but we do monitor for accounts that are using excessive numbers of calls, and will work with that developer to mitigate their usage. We are considering rate limits on video uploads, but these are still under development.

Rate limits on video playback

There are no limits on video playback. If there was ever an unprecedented global "viral video" at api.video, we would be able to handle the load. On the first request from our backend, api.video would deliver the video to our global video CDN, where it would be cached. The delivery from our CDN will be fast an efficient, and since it is abstracted from our infrastructure - will not impact and other video playback from api.video.