Tips for avoiding the API rate limit

[skedwards88]

About rate limits

GitHub uses rate limits to ensure that the API remains available for all users.

There are two types of rate limits: primary and secondary. Primary rate limits determine the total number of requests that you can make in one hour. Secondary rate limits determine how quickly you can make multiple requests within a period of time. Visit the documentation to learn more about rate limits for the REST API and GraphQL API.

Tips to avoid exceeding the rate limits

• Don't poll the API. Instead, use webhooks to get notified when events occur.
• Make requests serially instead of concurrently.
• If you are making a large number of requests that modify data on GitHub, wait at least one second between each request.
• If you are requesting data that might not have changed since the last time that you requested it, use conditional requests.

What to do if you exceed the rate limit

If you receive a rate limit error, you should stop making requests temporarily according to these guidelines:

• If the retry-after response header is present, you should not retry your request until after that many seconds has elapsed.
• If the x-ratelimit-remaining header is 0, you should not make another request until after the time specified by the x-ratelimit-reset header. The x-ratelimit-reset header is in UTC epoch seconds.
• Otherwise, wait for at least one minute before retrying. If your request continues to fail due to a secondary rate limit, wait for an exponentially increasing amount of time between retries, and throw an error after a specific number of retries.

Get a higher rate limit

You can't increase your secondary rate limit, but you can increase your primary rate limit:

• Make authenticated requests instead of unauthenticated requests. Authenticated requests have a significantly higher rate limit than unauthenticated requests.
• Use a GitHub App if your integration is serving an organization with many users or repositories. The rate limit for GitHub Apps using an installation access token scales with the number of repositories and number of organization users.
• Upgrade to GitHub Enterprise Cloud if you are using GitHub Apps or OAuth apps. GitHub Apps or OAuth apps have higher rate limits for organizations that use GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

[jmikrut]

Hi @skedwards88 - have there been any recent changes with GitHub rate limiting? My product creates repositories on behalf of our users, using a GitHub app, and authenticating on behalf of the user.

In the last hour, we have started being rate limited across the board as we try and create a repository on behalf of our user. Our platform is now unable to create new repos. Would love to know if something changed.

[skedwards88]

No recent changes to rate limiting, just sharing some tips here. The rate limit for GitHub App user access token is combined with any requests that another GitHub App or OAuth app makes on that user's behalf and any requests that the user makes with a personal access token, so high usage from other tokens is a potential cause. If these best practice and troubleshooting tips don't help, GitHub Support may be able to help.

[harshai07]

[ghostinhershell]

Hi @harshai07,

We’ve clarified our stance on using generative AI tools like ChatGPT within our Community via this announcement. Please review the guidelines to ensure your post meets them as failure to adhere to those rules can result in action taken by our moderator team.  You can read our updated Code of Conduct and the announcement for more details. Thank you for helping us maintain an authentic and beneficial space for everyone.

[AndrewOfC]

Quick way of checking your rate limit for the REST API:

https://github.com/AndrewOfC/githubpy#quick-rate-limit-check

[devstein]

Hi @skedwards88 👋 thank you for the resources!

Upgrade to GitHub Enterprise Cloud if you are using GitHub Apps or OAuth apps. GitHub Apps or OAuth apps have higher rate limits for organizations that use GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

Does upgrading to GitHub Enterprise Cloud only impact the rate limits of GitHub apps we are using? Or does it also impact the rate limits for our Github app that our customers use

[4roblox]

How do I remove my rate limit on roblox?