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: Blockscout
providerId: blockscout
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: false
tags:
  - Web3
  - Explorer
  - EVM
  - Rate Limiting
description: >-
  Per-chain Blockscout instances enforce a fair-use rate limit on the public REST endpoints
  (typically 10 rps per IP). The hosted PRO API on dev.blockscout.com gates per-key rate caps
  by plan tier and meters monthly credits.
notes: Rate-limit table for the PRO API was not directly accessible during research.
sources:
  - https://docs.blockscout.com/devs/apis
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
  - name: Public per-chain instance (fair use)
    scope: ip
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 10
  - name: PRO Free
    scope: api_key
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 5
  - name: PRO Paid
    scope: api_key
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: -1
    notes: Per-tier; consult dev.blockscout.com/pricing.
policies:
  - name: Backoff Strategy
    description: Honor 429 Retry-After and apply exponential backoff with jitter.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com