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: Orb
providerId: orb-billing
created: '2026-06-20'
modified: '2026-06-20'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Billing
- Usage-Based Billing
- Metering
- Subscriptions
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
- Throttling
description: >-
  Orb does not publish a hard, numeric rate limit for production API usage or a
  maximum request payload size; the docs instead ask customers to notify Orb
  before changing request volume or payload size by an order of magnitude from
  initial setup. The event ingestion path (POST /ingest) is the primary
  high-throughput surface and supports batched events per request. Test-mode
  event ingestion is constrained (documented around 2,000 events/minute and
  ~10 requests/second). When limits are exceeded the API returns HTTP 429 Too
  Many Requests, and Orb recommends retrying with exponential backoff. Specific
  production per-endpoint values are not reconciled in this artifact.
notes: >-
  Verify current ingestion throughput guidance and any account-specific limits
  with Orb during reconciliation; production limits are soft and coordinated
  with Orb rather than published as fixed numbers.
sources:
- https://docs.withorb.com/api-reference/rate-limits
- https://docs.withorb.com/events-and-metrics/event-ingestion
- https://docs.withorb.com/api-reference
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Production API
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: no hard published limit
  notes: Orb asks for a heads-up before changing volume by an order of magnitude; no fixed numeric cap is documented.
- name: Event Ingestion (production)
  scope: account
  metric: events
  limit: batched, coordinate high volume with Orb
  notes: POST /ingest accepts batched events; high-throughput ingestion is supported and coordinated with Orb.
- name: Event Ingestion (test mode)
  scope: account
  metric: events
  limit: ~2000 events/minute, ~10 requests/second
  notes: Test-mode ingestion is rate limited; production ingestion is not capped at these values.
- name: Request Payload Size
  scope: request
  metric: bytes
  limit: no hard published limit
  notes: No fixed maximum payload size documented; notify Orb before large changes.
policies:
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: On HTTP 429, retry the request with exponential backoff.
- name: Idempotency
  description: Mutating requests and event ingestion support idempotency keys so retries are safe and de-duplicated.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com