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: Gutendex
providerId: gutendex
created: '2026-05-29'
modified: '2026-05-29'
reconciled: true
tags:
  - Rate Limiting
  - Books
  - Open Source
description: >-
  Gutendex does not publicly document any hard rate limit, API key requirement, or quota
  on its hosted instance at https://gutendex.com. Pagination is fixed at 32 results per
  page on /books, and the search parameter caps keyword tokens at 32. Operators of
  self-hosted Gutendex instances may impose their own infrastructure-level limits (e.g.
  via nginx, Cloudflare, or Django middleware). Clients should be courteous: cache
  responses, throttle bursts, and back off on transient errors to avoid impacting the
  community-funded hosted instance.
sources:
  - https://gutendex.com
  - https://github.com/garethbjohnson/gutendex
  - https://github.com/garethbjohnson/gutendex/blob/master/readme.md
responseCodes:
  notFound: 404
limits:
  - name: Results per page
    scope: response
    metric: items_per_page
    limit: 32
    timeFrame: request
  - name: Search terms per query
    scope: query
    metric: tokens_per_request
    limit: 32
    timeFrame: request
  - name: Hosted instance request rate
    scope: global
    metric: undocumented
    limit: -1
    timeFrame: undocumented
policies:
  - name: No published rate limit
    description: Gutendex does not document a hard per-IP or per-key rate limit. The hosted
      instance relies on community goodwill; clients should self-throttle and cache responses.
  - name: No authentication
    description: All endpoints are publicly accessible with no API key, OAuth, or signup
      requirement.
  - name: Pagination
    description: /books always returns a maximum of 32 book objects per page, with `next` and
      `previous` URLs in the response wrapper for navigation.
  - name: Self-hosting recommended for high volume
    description: For production workloads or large-scale analytics, run a private instance
      of github.com/garethbjohnson/gutendex rather than the shared hosted endpoint.
  - name: Backoff on errors
    description: Treat transient 5xx responses with exponential backoff. The hosted instance
      is a small Django deployment without a documented retry-after header.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com