Rate limits and quotas

The two limits

The monthly quota is total requests per billing period: 10,000 on Free, 50,000 on Build, 500,000 on Scale, 2,000,000 on Archive. The rate limit is requests per minute: 60, 600, 3,000 and 12,000 respectively — that is 1, 10, 50 and 200 per second. Note that Free is the only tier where the rate limit, rather than the quota, is the binding constraint: it is deliberately generous on volume and slow on throughput.

Rate limits are enforced per serving replica, so the effective ceiling in production is generally higher than the published figure. Treat the published number as a guaranteed floor.

What happens at the limit

Exceeding the rate limit returns 429; back off and retry. Exceeding the monthly quota on the free plan stops requests, because there is no card on file and a surprise bill is worse than a clear stop. On paid plans requests continue and usage-based overage applies at the rate shown in your console.

History windows

Each plan also bounds how far back you may query: 30 days on Free, one year on Build, five years on Scale, and the full archive on Archive. This limits the date range of your filters, not the freshness of results — every plan sees the newest content.

Reading your own usage

The /account endpoint returns your plan, quota, usage this period and remaining allowance, using the same key you search with. Surface it inside your product rather than asking someone to open the console.

curl -H "x-api-key: $UNLOB_API_KEY" "https://api.unlob.com/account"