specification: API Commons Rate Limits
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/RateLimits
provider: Accurate Background
providerId: accurate-bg
created: '2026-07-03'
modified: '2026-07-03'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Background Checks
- Employment Screening
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
description: >-
  Accurate Background does not publish fixed numeric rate limits for the
  Accurate API (v3) in its public developer documentation. In practice, request
  throughput is a control-plane concern (creating candidates, placing orders,
  polling status), while the meaningful throughput is the volume of background
  screenings ordered, which is governed by the account's screening services
  agreement rather than a per-minute request cap. Standard HTTP semantics apply,
  and consumers should implement retry-with-backoff and rely on webhooks instead
  of tight polling for order/report status.
notes: >-
  No per-account or per-endpoint numeric request-rate limit is documented as of
  the review date. Confirm any account-specific throttling with Accurate during
  onboarding. Prefer webhook status callbacks over polling GET /order/{id} and
  GET /order/{id}/eta.
sources:
- https://accurate.readme.io/reference
- https://developer.accuratebackground.com/
- https://accurate.readme.io/docs/api-and-http-actions
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: API Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: No fixed numeric request-rate limit is documented for the Accurate API.
- name: Screening Volume
  scope: account
  metric: screenings
  limit: per agreement
  notes: Effective throughput is the number of ordered screenings, governed by the screening services agreement.
- name: Document Upload Size
  scope: request
  metric: bytes
  limit: 15728640
  notes: Uploaded documents are limited to 15MB (PDF, JPG, PNG, DOC, DOCX).
policies:
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Implement exponential backoff with jitter and honor Retry-After on 429 responses.
- name: Prefer Webhooks
  description: Use configured webhook status callbacks for order/report completion rather than polling to reduce request volume.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com