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: Open Exchange Rates
providerId: openexchangerates
created: '2026-07-11'
modified: '2026-07-11'
reconciled: true
tags:
- Foreign Exchange
- Currency
- Exchange Rates
- FX
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
description: >-
  Open Exchange Rates governs consumption with monthly request quotas per plan
  rather than published per-second or per-minute rate caps - 1,000 requests
  per month on Free, 10,000 on Developer, 100,000 on Enterprise, and unlimited
  on the Unlimited plan. Effective data freshness is additionally bounded by
  each plan's rate update frequency (hourly, 30-minute, 5-minute, or up to
  1-second on VIP), so polling faster than your plan updates returns the same
  rates. Time-series queries consume one request per day in the requested
  range; currencies.json and usage.json do not count against the quota. The
  usage.json endpoint reports requests made, quota, requests remaining, and
  daily average so clients can monitor consumption programmatically.
notes: >-
  No fixed numeric per-minute request cap is documented as of the review
  date. Exceeding the monthly allowance or calling a feature outside your
  plan produces JSON errors (for example access_restricted or not_allowed)
  with 403/429 status codes; accounts over quota are access-restricted until
  the next cycle or an upgrade.
sources:
- https://openexchangerates.org/signup
- https://docs.openexchangerates.org/reference/api-introduction
- https://docs.openexchangerates.org/reference/usage-json
- https://docs.openexchangerates.org/reference/time-series-json
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Free Plan Monthly Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: 1000 per month
  notes: Hourly rate updates; USD base currency only.
- name: Developer Plan Monthly Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: 10000 per month
  notes: Hourly rate updates; all base currencies.
- name: Enterprise Plan Monthly Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: 100000 per month
  notes: 30-minute rate updates; time-series enabled.
- name: Unlimited Plan Monthly Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: unlimited
  notes: 5-minute rate updates; conversion enabled.
- name: Time-Series Request Accounting
  scope: request
  metric: requests
  limit: 1 request per day in range (max one month per query)
  notes: A 31-day time-series query counts as roughly 31 requests against the quota.
- name: Per-Minute Request Rate
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: No fixed numeric request-rate cap is documented; the monthly quota is the governing limit.
policies:
- name: Free Metadata Endpoints
  description: Requests to currencies.json and usage.json do not count towards the account usage limit.
- name: Update-Frequency Bound
  description: Rates refresh on a fixed schedule per plan (hourly, 30-minute, 5-minute, or up to 1-second on VIP); cache responses and poll no faster than your plan's update frequency.
- name: Quota Monitoring
  description: Poll usage.json (free) to track requests, requests_remaining, days_remaining, and daily_average, and alert before exhausting the monthly allowance.
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Handle 403 access_restricted and 429 not_allowed JSON errors gracefully, backing off and upgrading the plan or waiting for the next billing cycle when the quota is exhausted.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com