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: D2L Brightspace
providerId: brightspace
created: '2026-07-03'
modified: '2026-07-03'
reconciled: false
tags:
- LMS
- Learning Management System
- EdTech
- Education
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
description: >-
  D2L Brightspace does not publish fixed numeric per-second or per-minute rate
  limits for the Valence Learning Framework API. Because the API is served from
  each institution's own Brightspace instance, effective throughput depends on
  the capacity of that deployment and on D2L's platform protections. In practice
  D2L applies server-side throttling and abuse protection, and integrations are
  expected to page large result sets with bookmarks rather than pull everything
  at once, and to schedule heavy or bulk work off-peak. For large-volume
  institutional data, D2L directs integrators to the Data Hub / Brightspace Data
  Sets bulk export path (asynchronous export jobs producing CSV/ZIP files)
  instead of high-frequency per-record REST calls. OAuth 2 access tokens are
  short-lived and must be refreshed with the issued refresh token.
notes: >-
  No official numeric API rate-limit table is documented as of the review date.
  Confirm any per-instance throttling thresholds, concurrency guidance, and Data
  Hub export scheduling with D2L for the target institution during
  reconciliation.
sources:
- https://docs.valence.desire2learn.com/basic/apicall.html
- https://docs.valence.desire2learn.com/basic/oauth2.html
- https://docs.valence.desire2learn.com/res/dataExport.html
- https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/21863-how-to-get-started-with-oauth-2-0
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Valence API Requests
  scope: instance
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: No fixed numeric request-rate limit is documented; throughput is bounded by the institution's Brightspace deployment and D2L platform protections.
- name: Paged Result Retrieval
  scope: endpoint
  metric: items
  limit: bookmark-paged
  notes: Large collections (users, enrollments, quizzes) are returned in pages; follow the PagingInfo bookmark rather than requesting unbounded result sets.
- name: Data Hub Export Jobs
  scope: instance
  metric: jobs
  limit: scheduled / asynchronous
  notes: Bulk institutional data is retrieved via asynchronous Data Export Framework jobs and Brightspace Data Sets extracts, not high-frequency REST polling.
- name: OAuth Access Token Lifetime
  scope: application
  metric: token
  limit: short-lived (refresh required)
  notes: Access tokens expire quickly; use the refresh token from the authorization code grant to obtain new access tokens.
policies:
- name: Pagination
  description: Use the returned PagingInfo bookmark to page through large collections instead of pulling all records in one call.
- name: Bulk Data Offload
  description: Prefer the Data Hub / Brightspace Data Sets bulk export path for reporting and warehousing workloads rather than iterating REST endpoints.
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: On HTTP 429 or transient errors, implement exponential backoff with jitter and retry rather than hammering the instance.
- name: Off-Peak Scheduling
  description: Schedule large synchronization and export jobs outside of peak instructional hours to avoid contending with interactive user load.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com