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: Circana
providerId: circana
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:
  - Analytics
  - Business Intelligence
  - Consumer Data
  - CPG
  - Market Research
  - Retail
  - Rate Limiting
description: Circana does not publish a public rate-limit policy for its Liquid Data, Unify+, or
  Intelligence Suite APIs. Practical limits are governed by the client's contracted data scope and
  query envelope and are enforced by the Circana platform team (deployed on Azure / AWS / GCP /
  Oracle Cloud / Snowflake). Bulk integration is preferred via cloud data shares (Snowflake,
  BigQuery) and pre-built connectors rather than high-frequency point queries.
notes: No public rate-limit numbers are documented. Approved customers receive limits guidance
  through Circana solutions / account teams.
sources:
  - https://www.circana.com/solutions
  - https://www.circana.com/company/technology
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  unauthorized: 401
  forbidden: 403
  serverError: 500
  serviceUnavailable: 503
limits:
  - name: Liquid Data API requests
    scope: tenant
    metric: varies
    limit: 'see Circana customer integration documentation; not publicly documented'
    notes: Limits are tied to contracted data scope and integration channel (point API vs cloud share).
  - name: Cloud share queries
    scope: tenant
    metric: varies
    limit: 'governed by underlying warehouse (Snowflake / BigQuery / Databricks)'
    notes: Query throughput is bounded by the client's own warehouse compute, not by a Circana cap.
policies:
  - name: Backoff Strategy
    description: On 429 / 5xx, retry with exponential backoff and jitter; honor Retry-After when
      present.
  - name: Bulk Over Polling
    description: Prefer Snowflake / BigQuery / Databricks data-share consumption and the
      Intelligence Suite connectors over high-frequency point API calls.
  - name: Scoped Access
    description: API access is scoped to the categories, geographies, and panels in the customer
      contract; out-of-scope queries return 403 / authorization errors rather than throttling.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com