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: AutoContent API
providerId: autocontent-api
created: '2026-05-04'
modified: '2026-09-04'
generated: '2026-09-04'
method: searched
source: >-
  https://autocontentapi.com/#pricing (per-plan daily and concurrency limits),
  https://autocontentapi.com/developers/errors (429 handling), the 429 responses and
  components.responses.AutoContentError header block in
  openapi/autocontent-api-platform-v1-openapi.json, and the per-route limits declared in
  openapi/autocontent-api-legacy-content-openapi.json.
description: >-
  Published throttling for AutoContent API. The limits that exist are commercial — a daily asset
  cap and a concurrency cap attached to each legacy plan — plus a handful of per-route limits on
  the legacy API. What is NOT published is the runtime signal: neither surface returns a
  RateLimit-* or X-RateLimit-* header, so a client can only discover it has hit a limit by
  receiving a 429.
limit_count: 9
headers:
  limit: null
  remaining: null
  reset: null
  retryAfter: Retry-After
  policy: null
  note: >-
    Retry-After is the only rate-limit header declared anywhere in either contract, and it is
    documented as present only "when the error supplies a bounded retry time" — so even on a 429 it
    is not guaranteed. No X-RateLimit-Limit / -Remaining / -Reset and no RFC-draft RateLimit-* family
    is published. An agent cannot budget against these limits; it can only react to them. The
    X-RateLimit-* header names carried in earlier rounds of this artifact were a scaffold default
    and were not observed — they are removed.
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  quotaExceeded: 429
  serviceUnavailable: 503
error_codes:
- code: rate_limited
  status: 429
  surface: Platform API v1
  action: Respect Retry-After or the authoritative reset.
- code: provider_operation_limit_exceeded
  status: 429
  surface: Platform API v1
  action: >-
    An upstream model provider's limit, not AutoContent's. Respect Retry-After or the authoritative
    reset.
limits:
- tier: amateur
  name: Amateur plan
  surface: Legacy Content API
  scope: account
  metric: assets
  limit: 15
  window: day
  applies_to: podcasts, videos, slide decks, infographics, quizzes
  source: https://autocontentapi.com/#pricing
- tier: amateur
  name: Amateur plan concurrency
  surface: Legacy Content API
  scope: account
  metric: concurrent_requests
  limit: 1
  window: instantaneous
  source: https://autocontentapi.com/#pricing
- tier: professional
  name: Professional plan
  surface: Legacy Content API
  scope: account
  metric: assets
  limit: 30
  window: day
  source: https://autocontentapi.com/#pricing
- tier: professional
  name: Professional plan concurrency
  surface: Legacy Content API
  scope: account
  metric: concurrent_requests
  limit: 5
  window: instantaneous
  source: https://autocontentapi.com/#pricing
- tier: enterprise
  name: Enterprise plan
  surface: Legacy Content API
  scope: account
  metric: assets
  limit: 60
  window: day
  source: https://autocontentapi.com/#pricing
- tier: enterprise
  name: Enterprise plan concurrency
  surface: Legacy Content API
  scope: account
  metric: concurrent_requests
  limit: 10
  window: instantaneous
  source: https://autocontentapi.com/#pricing
- tier: all
  name: Feed creation spacing
  surface: Legacy Content API
  scope: endpoint
  endpoint: POST /feeds
  metric: interval
  limit: 1
  window: 3s
  message: 'Rate limit exceeded. Please wait 3 seconds before creating another feed.'
  source: openapi/autocontent-api-legacy-content-openapi.json
- tier: none
  name: Public podcast ideas (unauthenticated, origin-gated)
  surface: Legacy Content API
  scope: ip
  endpoint: POST /podcast/ideas
  metric: requests
  limit: 2
  window: 24h
  additional:
    global_per_24h: 30
    concurrent_per_ip: 2
  source: openapi/autocontent-api-legacy-content-openapi.json
- tier: private-notebooks
  name: Private Notebooks rolling allowance
  surface: Dedicated Account
  scope: account
  metrics:
    questions_per_rolling_24h: 200
    audio_overviews_per_rolling_24h: 6
    video_overviews_per_rolling_24h: 6
    notebooks_total: 200
    sources_per_notebook: 100
  reset_discovery: GET /dedicated-account/usage returns resetsOn
  source: https://autocontentapi.com/#pricing
platform_api:
  published_limits: 0
  note: >-
    The Platform API v1 publishes NO numeric rate limit anywhere — not in the OpenAPI, not on
    /developers/api, not on the pricing page. It declares the failure modes (rate_limited,
    provider_operation_limit_exceeded, both 429 with an optional Retry-After) without ever saying
    what the threshold is. The effective governor on the Platform API is money, not requests:
    prepaid USD balance plus the per-Generation max_cost_usd and per-Loop budget ceilings. An honest
    zero, recorded rather than omitted.
quota_model:
  legacy: >-
    Monthly credits (1,000 / 5,000 / 10,000 by tier), consumed at published per-asset rates — see
    plans/autocontent-api-plans-pricing.yml. Credits are a quota, not a rate limit; the daily asset
    cap and concurrency cap above are the rate limits.
  platform: Prepaid USD service balance with per-request and per-Loop ceilings.