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: Continue
providerId: continue-dev
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: '2026-05-25'
reconciled: true
tags:
- AI
- Developer Tools
- Rate Limits
- Quotas
- Throttling
description: Continue Hub IDE API (api.continue.dev) returns HTTP 429 on quota exhaustion. The free trial enforces per-user chat and autocomplete counts via /ide/free-trial-status. Inference rate limits ultimately depend on the LLM provider the user routes through — Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, OpenRouter, Ollama, or the Continue-managed proxy.
sources:
- https://github.com/continuedev/continue/blob/main/packages/continue-sdk/openapi.yaml
- https://www.continue.dev/pricing
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Hub IDE API
  scope: per-user
  metric: requests
  limit: provider-enforced
  notes: api.continue.dev /ide/* endpoints return HTTP 429 when per-user quotas are exceeded. /ide/list-assistant-full-slugs in particular is currently flagged as always returning 429 in the spec.
- name: Free Trial Chat
  scope: per-user
  metric: chat-messages
  limit: chatLimit returned by /ide/free-trial-status
  notes: Per-user cap on chat messages allowed in Continue's managed free trial.
- name: Free Trial Autocomplete
  scope: per-user
  metric: autocomplete-requests
  limit: autocompleteLimit returned by /ide/free-trial-status
  notes: Per-user cap on autocomplete requests allowed in Continue's managed free trial.
- name: BYO LLM Provider
  scope: per-provider
  metric: requests / tokens
  limit: pass-through
  notes: When users bring their own LLM provider, rate limits and concurrency are governed by that provider, not Continue.
policies:
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter and honor any Retry-After header on 429 responses from api.continue.dev.
- name: Free-Trial Polling
  description: IDE extensions and the CLI should poll /ide/free-trial-status to surface remaining chat and autocomplete quota to the user before the cap is hit.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com