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: Memberful
providerId: memberful
created: '2026-07-05'
modified: '2026-07-05'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Memberships
- Subscriptions
- GraphQL
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
description: >-
  Memberful does not publish specific numeric rate limits for its GraphQL API in
  its public developer documentation. As with most GraphQL endpoints, effective
  throughput is shaped by query complexity and cursor-based pagination (callers
  page through members, subscriptions, and orders with first/after rather than
  pulling everything at once) rather than by a documented per-minute request cap.
  OAuth access tokens are short-lived (15 minutes) with one-year refresh tokens,
  which naturally bounds token churn. The numeric limits below are MODELED as
  sensible expectations and are not confirmed by Memberful.
notes: >-
  No per-account or per-endpoint numeric GraphQL rate limit is documented as of
  the review date. Design clients to page with cursors, keep queries shallow,
  honor 429 responses with exponential backoff and jitter, and cache member and
  plan data where possible. Verify any hard limits directly with Memberful before
  relying on high-volume access.
sources:
- https://memberful.com/help/custom-development-and-api/memberful-api/
- https://memberful.com/help/custom-development-and-api/sign-in-for-apps-via-oauth/
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: GraphQL Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: No fixed numeric request-rate limit is documented for the GraphQL endpoint.
- name: Query Complexity
  scope: request
  metric: complexity
  limit: not published (modeled)
  notes: GraphQL throughput is governed by query depth/complexity and pagination rather than a simple request count.
- name: Pagination Page Size
  scope: request
  metric: records
  limit: cursor-based (first/after/last/before)
  notes: Large result sets are traversed with cursor pagination; a maximum page size may apply but is not documented.
- name: OAuth Access Token Lifetime
  scope: token
  metric: minutes
  limit: 15
  notes: Access tokens expire after 15 minutes; refresh tokens are valid for one year.
policies:
- name: Cursor Pagination
  description: Page through members, subscriptions, and orders using first/after (or last/before) instead of unbounded queries.
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: On a 429 response, retry with exponential backoff and jitter and honor any Retry-After header.
- name: Query Efficiency
  description: Request only needed fields and keep query nesting shallow to reduce server-side complexity cost.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com