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: Credly
providerId: credly
created: '2026-07-05'
modified: '2026-07-05'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Digital Credentials
- Open Badges
- Pearson
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
description: >-
  Credly does not publish fixed numeric request-rate limits for its Web Service
  API. In practice the API is paginated - list endpoints such as issued badges,
  badge templates, and the events feed return bounded pages (the events feed
  returns at most 50 results per page and uses a page parameter for additional
  pages). Bulk issuing is performed page-by-page rather than in a single
  unbounded call. OAuth 2.0 access tokens are short-lived (2 hours), which
  effectively bounds token reuse. Any per-account request throttling is governed
  by an organization's contract with Credly (Pearson) rather than a documented
  public ceiling.
notes: >-
  No public per-minute or per-hour numeric API rate limit is documented as of
  the review date. Assume the platform may throttle abusive traffic and honor
  standard 429 handling. Confirm any contractual rate or volume limits with
  Credly during reconciliation.
sources:
- https://docs.credly.com/browse/docs/getting-started
- https://docs.credly.com/browse/docs/authentication-methods
- https://www.credly.com/docs/issued_badges
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Web Service API Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: No fixed numeric request-rate limit is documented for the Web Service API.
- name: Events Feed Page Size
  scope: endpoint
  metric: results
  limit: 50 per page
  notes: GET /v1/organizations/{organization_id}/events returns at most 50 results; page through with the page parameter.
- name: Paginated List Endpoints
  scope: endpoint
  metric: results
  limit: paginated
  notes: Badge template and issued badge lists are paginated with metadata (current_page, total_pages, total_count).
- name: OAuth Access Token Lifetime
  scope: token
  metric: seconds
  limit: 7200
  notes: OAuth 2.0 client_credentials access tokens expire after 2 hours; authorization tokens expire after 180 days.
policies:
- name: Pagination
  description: Iterate list and events endpoints using the page parameter and response metadata rather than requesting unbounded result sets.
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter and honor Retry-After on 429 responses.
- name: Token Refresh
  description: Refresh OAuth access tokens before the 2-hour expiry; do not exceed token reuse windows.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com