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: Blockchair
providerId: blockchair
created: '2026-06-21'
modified: '2026-06-21'
reconciled: true
tags:
- Blockchain
- Cryptocurrency
- Explorer
- On-Chain Data
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
- Throttling
description: >-
  Blockchair enforces a daily call quota plus per-second and per-minute rate
  limits. Without a key, usage is capped at roughly 1440 requests per day (about
  one per minute on average) with a hard ceiling of 30 requests per minute. A
  soft limit of about 5 requests per second applies to both free and paid plans,
  enabled manually by admins only when servers are under very high load. Paid
  Enterprise plans raise the daily call budget. Each call also has an internal
  request-cost weighting, so heavier queries draw down the daily quota faster.
notes: >-
  Soft per-second throttling is applied at the operator's discretion during high
  load. Verify current thresholds against blockchair.com/api/docs during
  reconciliation.
sources:
- https://blockchair.com/api/docs
- https://blockchair.com/api
- https://blockchair.com/api/plans
responseCodes:
  throttled: 402
limits:
- name: Daily Requests (no key)
  scope: ip
  metric: requests
  limit: 1440 per day
  notes: Personal/testing use without a key; about one request per minute on average.
- name: Requests Per Minute (no key)
  scope: ip
  metric: requests
  limit: 30 per minute
  notes: Hard ceiling on the free, no-key tier.
- name: Requests Per Second (soft)
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: ~5 per second
  notes: Soft limit on both free and paid plans, enabled manually under very high server load.
- name: Daily Calls (paid)
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: 25000-100000 per day
  notes: Set by the selected Enterprise plan; custom plans can exceed this.
- name: Request Cost
  scope: account
  metric: request_units
  limit: weighted per call
  notes: >-
    Each response carries a request_cost in context; heavier queries consume more
    of the daily call budget than the nominal one-call-per-request.
policies:
- name: Tiered Limits
  description: Daily call budgets rise from the free tier through Enterprise and custom plans.
- name: Load-Based Throttling
  description: The ~5 rps soft limit is toggled by admins only during periods of very high server load.
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Clients should throttle to stay under per-minute limits and back off when throttled.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com