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: Eligible
providerId: eligible
created: '2026-05-04'
modified: '2026-08-15'
generated: '2026-08-15'
method: searched
reconciled: true
source: >-
  https://eligible.com/pricing, https://eligible.com/community/technical-features-faq/,
  and the transport layer of Eligible's own first-party clients (rubygems.org eligible
  3.0.3 lib/eligible.rb, npm eligible-node 1.2.9 lib/http/client.js), read 2026-08-15.
note: >-
  REPLACES A SCAFFOLD. Until this pass this file asserted per-minute and per-month
  limits (10/min free, 100/min professional, 1000/min enterprise) and a full set of
  X-RateLimit-* response headers, none of which Eligible publishes or returns. Eligible
  publishes NO rate limits. What it publishes instead is a per-transaction PRICE, which
  is a different control: the API is metered commercially rather than throttled
  technically, and an over-running consumer is billed rather than 429'd. That is the
  honest finding and it is recorded as a zero, not padded.
limit_count: 0
limits: []
headers:
  limit: null
  remaining: null
  reset: null
  retryAfter: null
  policy: null
  requestId: X-Request-Id
  headers_note: >-
    Neither first-party client reads or handles RateLimit-*, X-RateLimit-* or
    Retry-After, and neither implements backoff. The only correlation header observed on
    a live anonymous response from https://gds.eligibleapi.com/v1.5/payers.json was
    X-Request-Id. Eligible's own transaction correlator (tracking_id) is a BODY field,
    not a header — see conventions/eligible-conventions.yml.
responseCodes:
  throttled: null
  quotaExceeded: null
  note: >-
    No 429 semantics are documented and none were observed. The documented failure modes
    are 400, 401 and 404 (see errors/eligible-error-codes.yml) plus payer-side AAA_4x
    "system not responding" rejects, which are the closest thing to a back-pressure
    signal on this API and arrive inside a 200 body.
commercial_metering:
  in_place_of_limits: true
  description: >-
    Volume is governed by price, not by a throttle. Eligible's published pricing charges
    excess real-time payment status and eligibility inquiries at 5 cents per transaction
    and excess cost estimates at 25 cents per transaction, each plus the payer
    passthrough fee, with ten eligibility/cost-estimation calls included per claim on
    the Patient Clearance product.
  source: https://eligible.com/pricing
  detail: plans/eligible-plans-pricing.yml
client_timeouts:
  open_timeout_seconds: 30
  read_timeout_seconds: 80
  note: >-
    The defaults Eligible ships in its own Ruby client. An 80-second read timeout is the
    only quantitative statement about request pacing the vendor makes anywhere, and it
    reflects payer round-trip latency rather than a limit Eligible imposes.
  source: rubygems:eligible@3.0.3 lib/eligible.rb
evidence:
  - url: https://eligible.com/pricing
    status: 200
    finding: Per-transaction prices published; no request limits stated.
  - url: https://gds.eligibleapi.com/v1.5/payers.json
    status: 401
    finding: No RateLimit-* or Retry-After headers on the response.
  - url: https://eligible.com/docs/api
    status: 200
    finding: Serves the Sign In page; any limits documented in the gated reference were not readable.
tags:
  - Rate Limiting
  - Healthcare
  - Insurance
  - Claims
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com