Rate limits

Understand how rate limits work and how to handle them.

All requests to the Current Weather Data API are subject to rate limits.

Limits

On the Free plan:

• 60 requests per minute
• 1,000,000 requests per month

If you exceed these limits, the API returns a 429 Too Many Requests response.

How to handle rate limits

When you receive a 429 response:

• Stop sending requests temporarily
• Wait at least one minute before retrying

Avoid sending bursts of requests in a short time window.

Best practices

• Cache responses when possible
• Avoid making duplicate requests for the same data
• Add retry logic with a delay when receiving 429 errors

Example retry strategy (JavaScript):

async function fetchWithRetry(url, options = {}, retries = 3) {
  const response = await fetch(url, options);

  // If rate limited (429) and retries remain, wait and retry
  if (response.status === 429 && retries > 0) {
    const delay = 60000; // wait 60 seconds before retrying
    await new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, delay));

    return fetchWithRetry(url, options, retries - 1);
  }

  // If the request failed for another reason, throw an error
  if (!response.ok) {
    throw new Error(`Request failed with status ${response.status}`);
  }

  // Otherwise, return the successful response
  return response;
}

Handling rate limits correctly helps prevent unnecessary failures and improves reliability.