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: Braintree
providerId: braintree
created: '2026-05-04'
# Provenance stamped 2026-08-11: this artifact was written by the API Evangelist
# bulk sweep dated 2026-05-04, not harvested from the provider. See roadmap#35.
method: generated
modified: '2026-05-05'
reconciled: false
tags:
  - Payments
  - Credit Cards
  - PayPal
  - Venmo
  - Rate Limiting
description: Braintree (a PayPal service) does not publish per-second or per-minute API rate-limit numbers
  on its public developer documentation. Throttling is enforced server-side and returns HTTP 429 or 503
  on overuse. The Braintree GraphQL API and legacy server SDKs share the same gateway capacity per merchant
  account. Sandbox accounts have lower headroom than production and exist primarily for integration testing.
sources:
  - https://developer.paypal.com/braintree/docs
  - https://developers.braintreepayments.com/
notes: Per-second numbers are not published; reach out to Braintree support for negotiated higher capacity.
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  serviceUnavailable: 503
limits:
  - name: Production gateway request rate
    scope: merchant-account
    metric: varies
    limit: 'see Braintree support'
    notes: Not publicly documented; throttling returns 429 / 503.
  - name: Sandbox gateway request rate
    scope: merchant-account
    metric: varies
    limit: 'lower than production - integration testing only'
    notes: Sandbox is meant for integration testing, not load testing.
  - name: GraphQL API
    scope: merchant-account
    metric: varies
    limit: 'shares production gateway capacity'
policies:
  - name: Backoff Strategy
    description: Apply exponential backoff with jitter on 429 and 5xx responses; honor Retry-After when
      present.
  - name: Idempotency
    description: Use deterministic transaction identifiers and the SDK's built-in idempotency support
      to safely retry transient failures without double-charging.
  - name: Sandbox Discipline
    description: Reserve sandbox credentials for integration tests; do not run sustained load tests against
      sandbox.
  - name: Capacity Increase
    description: Production capacity increases are negotiated through Braintree support and are tied to
      processing history and risk review.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: info@apievangelist.com