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: Ace Hardware
providerId: ace-hardware
generated: '2026-08-30'
method: searched
source: >-
  https://www.acehardware-vendors.com/, https://www.acehardware.com/robots.txt,
  https://support.logicbroker.com/kb/acehardware/37566558082836-Ace-Hardware-EDI-Specifications
created: '2026-05-04'
modified: '2026-08-30'
tags:
  - Retail
  - Hardware
  - Cooperative
  - EDI
  - Rate Limiting
description: >-
  Ace Hardware documents NO API rate limits, because it publishes no HTTP API. This file records
  that measured zero, together with the one throughput obligation Ace does publish — a 12-hour
  acknowledgement deadline on EDI documents, which is a latency requirement on the VENDOR rather
  than a limit Ace enforces on callers.
limit_count: 0
limits: []
headers: {}
responseCodes: {}
note: >-
  REPLACES A FABRICATED SCAFFOLD. Until 2026-08-30 this file asserted five rate limits (10/min
  free, 100/min professional, 1000/min enterprise, monthly quotas) and a full set of
  X-RateLimit-* response headers, written by the 2026-05-04 bulk sweep and marked
  `method: generated`. Ace Hardware returns none of those headers because it serves no API. The
  scaffold has been removed rather than carried forward.
searched:
  - url: https://www.acehardware-vendors.com/
    status: 200
    finding: No throughput limits, no document-volume ceiling, and no throttling policy published.
  - url: https://support.logicbroker.com/kb/acehardware/37566558082836-Ace-Hardware-EDI-Specifications
    status: 200
    finding: Transaction sets and mapping PDFs only. No volume or frequency limits stated.
  - url: https://www.acehardware.com/robots.txt
    status: 200
    finding: >-
      The only published request-pacing signal Ace Hardware serves anywhere is `Crawl-delay: 5`
      for non-Google user agents in robots.txt, with Googlebot, Googlebot-image, Storebot-Google
      and Google-Extended explicitly unrestricted. That is a crawler courtesy directive, not an
      API rate limit, and it is recorded here because it is the only pacing number the provider
      publishes.
crawler_directives:
  crawl_delay_seconds: 5
  applies_to: 'User-agent: *'
  unrestricted_agents:
    - Googlebot
    - Googlebot-image
    - Storebot-Google
    - Google-Extended
  source: https://www.acehardware.com/robots.txt
vendor_obligations:
  - name: Functional acknowledgement deadline
    detail: Vendor must return a 997 acknowledgement within 12 hours of receiving an Ace document.
    direction: imposed by Ace on the vendor
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com