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: Happy Scribe
providerId: happyscribe
created: '2026-07-11'
modified: '2026-07-11'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Audio Transcription
- Transcription
- Subtitles
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
description: >-
  Happy Scribe does not publish fixed numeric per-minute request limits for its
  REST API in the public developer documentation. The practical constraint on
  usage is economic rather than a request-rate cap: transcription, subtitling, and
  translation consume AI credits (per minute of media) or human-service credits
  from your plan balance, so throughput is governed by your subscription allowance
  and topped-up credits. Long-running work is asynchronous - create an order or
  export, then poll its state or wait for a webhook - so clients should poll at a
  reasonable interval and back off rather than tight-loop.
notes: >-
  No numeric per-account or per-endpoint request-rate limits are documented as of
  the review date. Consumers should implement exponential backoff with jitter,
  honor Retry-After on any 429, and prefer webhooks over aggressive polling.
  Confirm any account-specific limits with Happy Scribe support.
sources:
- https://dev.happyscribe.com/
- https://dev.happyscribe.com/sections/product/
- https://www.happyscribe.com/integrations/api
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: REST API Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: No fixed numeric request-rate limit is documented for the REST API.
- name: AI Credit Allowance
  scope: account
  metric: minutes
  limit: per plan
  notes: Automatic transcription/subtitling/translation draws down per-minute AI credits from your plan and top-ups.
- name: Human Service Allowance
  scope: account
  metric: minutes
  limit: pay-per-use
  notes: Professional (human) transcription and subtitling is billed per minute against balance.
- name: Export Polling
  scope: resource
  metric: requests
  limit: client-controlled
  notes: Exports and orders are asynchronous; poll state at a reasonable interval or use webhooks.
policies:
- name: Webhooks over Polling
  description: Register a webhook to receive an HTTP callback when a transcription completes, instead of polling.
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Implement exponential backoff with jitter and honor Retry-After on 429 responses.
- name: Credit-Governed Throughput
  description: Effective throughput is bounded by plan AI/human credit balance rather than a per-minute request cap.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com