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: First American Financial
providerId: first-american-financial
created: '2026-05-04'
modified: '2026-09-09'
generated: '2026-09-09'
method: searched
source: >-
  https://developer.firstam.io/api/docs plus the 16 Digital Gateway specifications harvested
  2026-09-09
limit_count: 0
note: >-
  NO PUBLISHED RATE LIMITS. This file previously carried invented per-minute and per-month numbers
  for three invented tiers, written by the 2026-05-04 bulk sweep; none of it came from First
  American and it has been removed. What IS documented is the exhaustion behaviour and the
  governance model, both recorded below. Rate limits are real on this platform but they are
  contractual: the documentation defines a QoS (quality of service) policy as defining "the level
  of service being offered to an app that is accessing an API; for example, the number of
  transactions per minute that are allowed for the app", attached to a License Term negotiated per
  customer. No default, no published ceiling, and no self-service tier.
headers:
  published: false
  note: >-
    NO rate-limit response headers are documented and none is declared in any of the 16 harvested
    contracts. There is no RateLimit-*, no X-RateLimit-*, and no Retry-After. An agent hitting the
    ceiling receives a bare 503 and cannot compute a backoff or see remaining budget - the runtime
    signal an agent actually needs is absent even though the limit itself exists.
responseCodes:
  quotaExceeded: 503
  quotaExceededTitle: Exceed usage limit
  quotaExceededDetail: Maximum amount of usage limit has been reached for API calls.
  throttled: null
  note: >-
    503, NOT 429. This is unusual and load-bearing for a client: a naive retry policy that only
    treats 429 as throttling will read quota exhaustion as a server outage, and one that treats 503
    as always-retryable will hammer an exhausted quota. 503 is declared on 34 of the 93 harvested
    operations.
  source: https://developer.firstam.io/api/docs
limits: []
governance:
  model: per-contract QoS policy
  unit: transactions per minute (documented as the example unit; actual values are not published)
  attached_to: License Term
  set_by: First American API administrator, as part of a License offered to the App developer
  scope: per App
  source: https://developer.firstam.io/api/docs
  quotes:
    - >-
      "A QoS policy defines the level of service being offered to an app that is accessing an API;
      for example, the number of transactions per minute that are allowed for the app. In the
      platform, QoS policies are tied to license terms."
    - >-
      "Restricted access for an app means that the app's access to the API is restricted to a subset
      of the API, as defined by scope mapping, or to a specified, agreed-upon quota as defined by a
      QoS policy."
policies:
  - name: Quota governance
    description: >-
      Quotas are negotiated, not published. Raising one is a conversation with the First American
      relationship team, not a plan upgrade.
evidence:
  - {url: 'https://developer.firstam.io/api/docs', status: 200, finding: '503 "Exceed usage limit" documented in the API Errors table; QoS/License Term model documented in the glossary; no numbers'}
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com