# Provenance stamped 2026-10-07 (roadmap#943): written by an API Evangelist sweep (dated 2026-05-25 by the file itself), not
# harvested from the provider. `method: generated` so the economics campaign may replace it with a
# dated, verbatim transcription; every figure below is unverified until it does.
method: generated
generated: '2026-05-25'
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: LanceDB
providerId: lancedb
created: '2026-05-25'
modified: '2026-05-25'
description: >-
  Rate-limit posture for the Lance Namespace REST API as exposed by LanceDB
  Cloud and LanceDB Enterprise. LanceDB OSS embeds in your own process and
  does not enforce HTTP rate limits; capacity is bound by the underlying
  object store and compute. Cloud limits below are conservative defaults;
  actual limits are negotiated per tenant. The API does not publicly
  document specific `Retry-After` semantics — clients should treat HTTP 429
  and 503 as retryable with exponential backoff.
policies:
  - scope: lancedb-oss
    description: >-
      No HTTP rate limit. Throughput is governed by host CPU, RAM, and
      object-store concurrency.
    limit: none
  - scope: lancedb-cloud-free
    description: >-
      Free-tier query rate cap on the Lance Namespace REST API.
    type: rate
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 10
    timeFrame: second
    quota:
      type: quota
      metric: gigabytes_stored
      limit: 5
      timeFrame: month
    overageBehavior: hardCap
    retryHeaders:
      - Retry-After (on 429 / 503)
  - scope: lancedb-cloud-business
    description: >-
      Production tier with elastic throughput. Soft defaults raised on
      request via support; effective ceiling depends on provisioned
      capacity.
    type: rate
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: contact-sales
    burst: contact-sales
    quota:
      type: quota
      metric: gigabytes_stored
      limit: contact-sales
      timeFrame: month
    overageBehavior: throttle
    retryHeaders:
      - Retry-After (on 429 / 503)
  - scope: lancedb-enterprise
    description: >-
      Self-hosted in customer VPC. Limits configured by the customer at
      deployment time; no provider-enforced ceiling.
    type: rate
    limit: customer-configured
references:
  - name: REST API Reference
    url: https://docs.lancedb.com/api-reference/rest/
  - name: Lance Namespace OpenAPI
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lance-format/lance-namespace/main/docs/src/spec.yaml