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: ActiveCampaign
providerId: activecampaign
created: '2026-05-04'
modified: '2026-08-13'
generated: '2026-08-13'
method: searched
source: https://developers.activecampaign.com/reference/rate-limits
docs: https://developers.activecampaign.com/reference/rate-limits
tags:
  - Marketing Automation
  - Email Marketing
  - CRM
  - Sales Automation
  - Customer Experience
  - Rate Limiting
  - Throttling
description: >-
  ActiveCampaign publishes exactly one rate limit for the v3 REST API and applies it
  account-wide: 5 requests per second per account. This artifact replaces the
  2026-05-04 scaffold, which asserted a fabricated 10 requests-per-minute free tier
  and a set of per-tier limits ActiveCampaign has never published. Everything below is
  quoted from the provider's own rate-limits page (updatedAt 2025-10-02) and its
  GraphQL reference, which restates the same 5 rps figure for the Ecommerce GraphQL
  API.
limit_count: 2
limits:
  - id: v3-rest-account
    name: v3 REST API — per account
    scope: account
    scope_note: >-
      The limit is per ACCOUNT, not per API key. Every key issued inside an
      ActiveCampaign account shares one 5 rps budget, so adding integrations does not
      add throughput. This is the single most operationally important fact on the page.
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 5
    burst: null
    burst_note: No burst allowance is documented.
    timeFrame: second
    applies_to:
      - https://developers.activecampaign.com/reference/overview
    tier: all
    tier_note: >-
      ActiveCampaign documents no plan-differentiated API limits. Starter, Plus, Pro
      and Enterprise are all documented at the same 5 rps.
  - id: ecom-graphql-account
    name: Ecommerce GraphQL API — per account
    scope: account
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 5
    burst: null
    timeFrame: second
    applies_to:
      - 'https://{yourAccountName}.api-us1.com/api/3/ecom/graphql'
    tier: all
    note: >-
      "The eComm GraphQL API follows the same rate limit restriction as the existing v3
      REST API of 5 requests per second per account."
headers:
  limit: RateLimit-Limit
  remaining: RateLimit-Remaining
  reset: null
  retryAfter: Retry-After
  policy: null
header_notes: >-
  The provider documents the draft-standard unprefixed forms with worked examples —
  "RateLimit-Limit: 5", "RateLimit-Remaining: 3", "Retry-After: 30". It does NOT
  document X-RateLimit-* headers, does NOT document a reset timestamp header, and does
  NOT document a RateLimit-Policy header. The 2026-05-04 scaffold claimed all four
  X-RateLimit-* forms; that claim was wrong and has been removed. Retry-After is the
  only recovery signal an agent can rely on.
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  quotaExceeded: null
  serviceUnavailable: null
exhaustion:
  status: 429
  reason_phrase: Too Many Requests
  behavior: >-
    "When you exceed the number of requests we allow, we will respond with a 429 Too
    Many Requests response. This response will include headers for a duration in
    seconds (ex. Retry-After: 30) in order to pause the existing requests. Once paused,
    you may resume sending traffic."
  agent_guidance: >-
    Honour Retry-After literally; it is a whole number of seconds. Because the budget
    is per account and shared across every key, backoff must be coordinated across
    integrations rather than per client.
quotas:
  documented: false
  note: >-
    ActiveCampaign publishes no monthly or daily API call quota. Volume limits on
    ActiveCampaign plans are expressed in contacts and email sends (see
    plans/activecampaign-plans-pricing.yml), not in API requests.
related:
  conventions: conventions/activecampaign-conventions.yml
  plans: plans/activecampaign-plans-pricing.yml
  errors: errors/activecampaign-problem-types.yml
x-evidence:
  - {url: 'https://developers.activecampaign.com/reference/rate-limits.md', http_status: 200, fetched: '2026-08-13', updated_at: '2025-10-02T20:52:58.000Z'}
  - {url: 'https://developers.activecampaign.com/reference/about-the-graphql-api.md', http_status: 200, fetched: '2026-08-13'}
x-supersedes:
  file: rate-limits/activecampaign-rate-limits.yml
  previous_method: generated
  previous_date: '2026-05-04'
  reason: >-
    The prior file was a bulk-sweep scaffold. Its limits (10 rpm free / burst 20 and
    per-tier variants) and its X-RateLimit-* header set were not published by
    ActiveCampaign and are replaced by the provider's own figures.