Rate Limiting

The Voidnet enforces usage limits so that no single buyer or key can overload the system or a publisher's server, and so publishers can offer free and paid tiers with monthly quotas.

Limits

Your request volume is capped in two ways:

• Rate limit — a per-minute and per-day cap on how fast you can send requests. Exceeding it returns 429 rate_limit_exceeded.
• Meter limit — a monthly quota on total requests per app. Defined by the publisher per tier. Exceeding it returns 429 meter_limit_exceeded. Meters reset on a rolling 30-day window from your purchase date.

When a billing period ends, the gateway returns 429 meter_expired until the meter resets.

What happens when you hit a limit

A 429 response looks like:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "rate_limit_exceeded",
    "message": "Rate limit exceeded: too many requests per minute",
    "status": 429
  }
}

{
  "error": {
    "code": "meter_limit_exceeded",
    "message": "Monthly meter limit exceeded",
    "status": 429
  }
}

There are no X-RateLimit-* response headers. Track your usage and remaining quota in the Console under Usage.

Meter limits by tier

Publishers configure these limits when they set up an app's tiers. To see an app's limits, check its marketplace page.

Fairness between apps and tiers

Buckets belong to apps: your usage of one app never consumes another app's quota. Free and paid traffic are counted separately at every fairness scope, so free-tier bursts can't eat paid headroom. Paid traffic skips the publisher-capacity check entirely — it is already bounded per app by tier quotas and wallet balance. The publisher's server has its own capacity ceiling (per publisher, free traffic only) — one hot app can't throttle its siblings.

Best practices

1. Implement exponential backoff — on a 429, wait before retrying. Start at 1 second, double each attempt.
2. Track usage in the Console — the Usage page shows remaining meter quota per app so you can anticipate limits.
3. Distribute across keys — for high-volume applications, use multiple API keys to spread load.
4. Upgrade your tier — if you consistently hit limits, a paid tier from the publisher gives a higher meter.