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ZapFetch applies per-API-key rate limits to protect the platform and your own credit balance from runaway loops. Limits are enforced globally across all ZapFetch endpoints.

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Per-plan limits

These numbers are indicative. The authoritative values live in the Console under your current plan.
Plan/scrape, /search, /map, /extract (req/sec)/crawl (req/sec)Concurrent crawls
Free522
Starter501010
Pro2003020
/v1/crawl has a tighter per-second budget because each call can dispatch hundreds of background page fetches. Concurrent crawls cap the number of /v1/crawl jobs in-flight for a single key; completed or cancelled crawls don’t count.

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429 response shape

When you exceed a limit ZapFetch returns 429 Too Many Requests with a Retry-After header (seconds): 
HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Retry-After: 12
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "success": false,
  "error": "rate_limited",
  "message": "You have exceeded 50 requests/second for the Starter plan."
}
  • Honor Retry-After literally — don’t retry before the header says you can.
  • On repeated 429s, fall back to exponential backoff with jitter: sleep(min(cap, base * 2^attempt) + random_jitter).
  • Batch work where possible: /v1/crawl accepts a limit and maxDepth so you do not have to orchestrate per-page /v1/scrape calls yourself.
  • Pool connections per-process — a burst of “one-shot” calls hits rate limits faster than a steady stream with keep-alive.

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Requesting higher limits

Pro customers with bursty workloads can request a higher per-minute ceiling by emailing support@zapfetch.com; we review case-by-case. Rate limits never exceed what your credit balance can actually support — this is a safety net, not a bottleneck for normal use.