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: Alpaca
providerId: alpaca
created: '2026-05-08'
# Provenance stamped 2026-08-11: this artifact was written by the API Evangelist
# bulk sweep dated 2026-05-08, not harvested from the provider. See roadmap#35.
method: generated
modified: '2026-05-08'
reconciled: true
tags:
  - Fintech
  - Trading
  - Stocks
  - Crypto
  - Rate Limiting
description: >-
  Alpaca enforces per-account rate limits on the Trading and Market Data APIs. The default Free
  plan caps REST traffic at 200 requests per minute. The Algo Trader Plus plan raises the cap to
  10,000 requests per minute for Market Data REST. WebSocket symbol subscriptions are also tiered.
  All endpoints return HTTP 429 when limits are exceeded.
sources:
  - https://docs.alpaca.markets/docs/api-rate-limits
  - https://alpaca.markets/data
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
  - name: Trading API default
    scope: account
    metric: requests_per_minute
    limit: 200
    notes: Free Trading API rate limit per account.
  - name: Market Data REST (Free)
    scope: account
    metric: requests_per_minute
    limit: 200
    notes: Free Market Data plan REST rate limit.
  - name: Market Data REST (Algo Trader Plus)
    scope: account
    metric: requests_per_minute
    limit: 10000
    notes: Paid plan REST rate limit.
  - name: WebSocket symbols (Free)
    scope: connection
    metric: symbols_per_connection
    limit: 30
    notes: Free WebSocket subscription cap.
  - name: WebSocket symbols (Algo Trader Plus)
    scope: connection
    metric: symbols_per_connection
    limit: -1
    notes: Unlimited symbols on paid plan.
policies:
  - name: Backoff Strategy
    description: On 429, honor Retry-After and apply exponential backoff with jitter.
  - name: Connection Limits
    description: Only one WebSocket connection per account is allowed for market data streams.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com