generated: '2026-08-13'
method: searched
source: https://developer.meltwater.com/guides/getting-started/usage-limits
name: Meltwater API Rate Limits
description: >-
  Meltwater limits the API on four independent axes: per-endpoint request rate, a daily
  analytics call budget, a monthly document allowance, and a monthly export count. The
  monthly and daily budgets are contract terms, not published numbers - what is published
  are the "inclusive API access" defaults that ship with the core Meltwater packages.
url: https://developer.meltwater.com/guides/getting-started/usage-limits
limit_count: 7
limits:
  - name: Export endpoint rate limit
    description: Applies to the export creation endpoints.
    scope: per_endpoint
    requests: 20
    period: per_minute
    applies_to:
      - POST /export/v1/exports/one-time
      - POST /export/v1/exports/recurring
      - POST /v3/exports/one-time
      - POST /v3/exports/recurring
  - name: Daily analytics calls (inclusive API access)
    description: Analytics and earned-media search calls share one daily budget.
    scope: per_account
    requests: 50
    period: per_day
    applies_to: analytics and search endpoints
    notes: >-
      Customers with an API package have a contract number instead (Meltwater's own example is
      100/day). The day window starts at the first request after the counter resets, not at
      midnight UTC.
  - name: Daily analytics calls (API package)
    scope: per_contract
    requests: varies
    period: per_day
    applies_to: analytics and search endpoints
    notes: Stated in the customer contract; surfaced at runtime in the RateLimit-Day-Limit header.
  - name: Documents per month (inclusive API access)
    scope: per_account
    requests: 30000
    unit: documents
    period: per_month
    applies_to: exports, searches, data streams and Explore+ searches (shared pool)
    notes: >-
      Resets on the 1st. Documents are NOT de-duplicated - exporting the same document twice
      costs two. Documents imported through BYOC and read back do not count.
  - name: Exports per month (inclusive API access)
    scope: per_account
    requests: 50
    unit: exports
    period: per_month
    notes: >-
      One export may cover up to 5 saved searches or tags and still counts as one. API package
      customers have a contract number (Meltwater's example is 100/month).
  - name: Documents per export
    scope: per_request
    requests: 2000000
    unit: documents
    period: per_export
    notes: An export forecast above this is randomly sampled down to approximately 2,000,000 documents.
  - name: MCP endpoint rate limit
    scope: per_key
    requests: 60
    period: per_minute
    applies_to: https://api.meltwater.com/v2/mcp
    method: probed
    notes: >-
      Not documented anywhere. Observed on a live unauthenticated POST to the MCP endpoint on
      2026-08-13, which returned RateLimit-Limit 60, RateLimit-Remaining 59, RateLimit-Reset 55
      and X-RateLimit-Limit-Minute 60 alongside the 401.
headers:
  documented:
    - name: RateLimit-Day-Limit
      description: Daily API credits available under the customer's API package.
      returned_on: every analytics request
    - name: RateLimit-Day-Remaining
      description: Credits left before rate limiting; at 0 all further requests fail.
      returned_on: every analytics request
    - name: RateLimit-Day-Reset
      description: Unix timestamp of the next reset.
      returned_on: every analytics request
    - name: Retry-After
      description: On an Earned Analytics 429 ("Service overloaded, please try again later"), the timestamp after which to retry.
  observed:
    - name: RateLimit-Limit
    - name: RateLimit-Remaining
    - name: RateLimit-Reset
    - name: X-RateLimit-Limit-Minute
    - name: X-RateLimit-Remaining-Minute
    - name: X-Request-Id
  note: >-
    The `observed` set was read off a live response from https://api.meltwater.com/v2/mcp on
    2026-08-13. The `documented` set is what the Usage Limits guide promises on analytics
    responses.
error_codes:
  - code: 429
    description: Too Many Requests - rate limit or quota exceeded, or the analytics service is overloaded.
  - code: 403
    description: Also returned when the daily API credit budget is exhausted.
alerts:
  - trigger: 90% of the monthly document or export quota
    channel: "'API Usage' system alert to account administrators"
  - trigger: 100% of the monthly quota
    channel: "'API Usage' system alert to account administrators"
usage_endpoints:
  - GET /v3/usage/me/metrics/{metric}
  - GET /v3/usage/me/requests
  - note: both accept an optional token_id query parameter to break usage down by API token (added 2026-03-03)
sources:
  - https://developer.meltwater.com/guides/getting-started/usage-limits
  - https://developer.meltwater.com/api-reference/api-reference-overview
  - https://developer.meltwater.com/guides/getting-started/accessing-usage-statistics