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: Alliance Resource Partners
providerId: alliance-resource-partners
generated: '2026-09-01'
created: '2026-05-04'
modified: '2026-09-01'
method: probed
source: >-
  https://www.arlp.com/robots.txt and live response headers observed on https://www.arlp.com/wp-json/ on
  2026-09-01
reconciled: true
tags:
  - Coal
  - Mining
  - Energy
  - Rate Limiting
description: >-
  Alliance Resource Partners documents no API rate limits, because it runs no developer program. The
  reachable surface - the read-only WordPress REST API on www.arlp.com - returns NO rate-limit response
  headers at all: no X-RateLimit-*, no RateLimit-*, no Retry-After was observed on any 200 response. Two
  real throughput signals do exist on the host and are recorded below: a published Crawl-delay of 10 seconds
  in robots.txt, and an intermittent Cloudflare bot-management challenge that returns HTTP 403 with an
  "Attention Required! | Cloudflare" body on rapid sequential requests. Neither is an API rate-limit
  contract; both are what a consumer will actually hit.
notes: >-
  Rewritten 2026-09-01. This file previously carried a "Bilateral-Negotiated Throughput" limit written by the
  2026-05-04 bulk sweep, which described an agreement ARLP does not publish. limit_count is 0 - a documented
  zero, not an unchecked field. The per-request page-size ceiling below is a real, enforced constraint read
  off a live 400 response, but it is a pagination bound, not a rate limit, and it is recorded as such.
limit_count: 0
limits: []
response_headers:
  rate_limit_headers: []
  retry_after: false
  observed_on: https://www.arlp.com/wp-json/wp/v2/pages?per_page=2
  note: Only pagination headers (X-WP-Total, X-WP-TotalPages, Link) and cache headers are returned.
responseCodes:
  throttled: null
  bot_challenge: 403
observed_throughput_signals:
  - kind: robots-crawl-delay
    value: 10
    unit: seconds
    source: https://www.arlp.com/robots.txt
    status: 200
    detail: 'The first line of robots.txt is "Crawl-delay: 10", ahead of the Yoast block.'
  - kind: edge-bot-challenge
    value: 403
    source: https://www.arlp.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types
    detail: >-
      Cloudflare returned an "Attention Required! | Cloudflare" interstitial on a rapid sequential request
      and served the JSON normally after a short pause. Not a documented policy; an edge behaviour a
      consumer must pace around.
  - kind: page-size-ceiling
    value: 100
    unit: records per request
    source: https://www.arlp.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=999
    status: 400
    detail: >-
      'per_page must be between 1 (inclusive) and 100 (inclusive)' - returned verbatim in the
      rest_invalid_param error body. A pagination bound, not a rate limit.
policies:
  - name: No published rate-limit policy
    description: ARLP publishes no rate-limit documentation. Pace requests to the robots.txt Crawl-delay of 10s.
  - name: Backoff strategy
    description: >-
      On an HTTP 403 Cloudflare challenge, back off and retry after several seconds rather than immediately;
      the challenge is transient and no Retry-After is supplied.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com