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: Pixie
providerId: pixie
created: '2026-05-04'
# Provenance stamped 2026-08-11: this artifact was written by the API Evangelist
# bulk sweep dated 2026-05-04, not harvested from the provider. See roadmap#35.
method: generated
modified: '2026-05-05'
reconciled: false
tags:
  - Rate Limiting
  - Observability
  - Kubernetes
  - Open Source
notes: Pixie is open source and self-hostable. The project does not publish API rate limits because
  throughput is bounded by the user's own deployed Pixie Cloud and Vizier components. Community-
  hosted Pixie Cloud may apply soft fair-use limits that are not publicly documented.
description: Pixie is an Apache-2.0 open-source observability tool. The Pixie API surface (gRPC
  Cloud API, PxL Script API, Plugin System API) is consumed against either a self-hosted Pixie
  Cloud or the community-hosted Pixie Cloud. The project does not publish numeric per-key rate
  limits; throughput is governed by the deployment's own resource allocation and any fair-use
  limits the community-hosted environment chooses to enforce.
sources:
  - https://docs.px.dev/about-pixie/faq/
  - https://docs.px.dev/reference/api/overview/
responseCodes:
  serviceUnavailable: 503
limits:
  - name: Self-Hosted Pixie Cloud
    scope: deployment
    metric: varies
    limit: 'bounded by user-deployed resources; no project-published per-second numeric'
    notes: Throughput depends on the size of the Pixie Cloud and Vizier components in your cluster.
  - name: Community-Hosted Pixie Cloud
    scope: organization
    metric: varies
    limit: 'fair-use; not publicly documented'
    notes: The community-hosted control plane applies soft fair-use limits to prevent abuse.
      Sustained heavy users are encouraged to self-host.
policies:
  - name: Self-Hosting
    description: For predictable throughput, deploy your own Pixie Cloud + Vizier rather than relying
      on the community-hosted control plane.
  - name: PxL Script Sampling
    description: PxL scripts that aggregate over the in-memory eBPF table are constrained by the
      retention window of that table (typically tens of seconds to minutes); design queries to
      sample rather than full-scan large clusters.
  - name: Backoff
    description: On 503 responses, retry with exponential backoff and jitter.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com