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: Market Data
providerId: marketdata-app
created: '2026-07-11'
modified: '2026-07-11'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Market Data
- Financial Data
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
- Credits
description: >-
  Market Data governs usage with an API-credit model rather than a simple
  requests-per-second limit. Every successful call costs at least one credit,
  and the multi-symbol endpoints (stocks/bulkquotes, stocks/bulkcandles,
  options/chain, stocks/quotes) consume one credit for each symbol returned in
  the response - so a full option chain can cost thousands of credits. Free,
  Starter, and Trader plans enforce a daily credit cap that resets at 9:30 AM
  Eastern; Quant and Prime remove the daily cap and apply a per-minute credit
  ceiling instead. Across all plans there is a hard limit of 50 simultaneous
  requests, and an account may only be used from a single IP address at a time.
notes: >-
  An in-flight request is allowed to proceed as long as at least one credit
  remains, even if it pushes the balance negative; subsequent calls are blocked
  until the window resets. Verify current credit allowances and caps on the plan
  limits page during reconciliation.
sources:
- https://www.marketdata.app/docs/account/plan-limits/
- https://www.marketdata.app/docs/api/
- https://www.marketdata.app/pricing/
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  cached: 203
limits:
- name: Free Forever Daily Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: 100 per day
  notes: Free tier is capped at 100 requests per day; resets 9:30 AM Eastern.
- name: Starter Daily Credits
  scope: account
  metric: credits
  limit: 10000 per day
  notes: Resets 9:30 AM Eastern. No per-minute cap.
- name: Trader Daily Credits
  scope: account
  metric: credits
  limit: 100000 per day
  notes: Resets 9:30 AM Eastern. No per-minute cap.
- name: Quant Per-Minute Credits
  scope: account
  metric: credits
  limit: 10000 per minute
  notes: No daily cap; credits are governed on a per-minute window.
- name: Prime Per-Minute Credits
  scope: account
  metric: credits
  limit: 100000 per minute
  notes: No daily cap; credits are governed on a per-minute window.
- name: Simultaneous Requests
  scope: account
  metric: connections
  limit: 50 concurrent
  notes: All plans are capped at 50 simultaneous in-flight requests.
- name: Per-Symbol Credit Consumption
  scope: request
  metric: credits
  limit: 1 credit per symbol returned
  notes: bulkquotes, bulkcandles, options/chain, and multi-symbol quotes charge one credit per symbol in the response.
policies:
- name: Single IP per Account
  description: An account may only be accessed from one IP address at a time; concurrent connections from multiple locations are not permitted.
- name: Cached Responses
  description: Any endpoint may return HTTP 203 Non-Authoritative Information when served from the caching tier; clients must treat 203 the same as 200 OK.
- name: Negative Balance Grace
  description: A request proceeds if at least one credit remains, even if it drives the balance negative; further requests block until the window resets.
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter and honor Retry-After on 429 responses.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com