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: Reddit
providerId: reddit
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:
  - Social Media
  - Content
  - Rate Limiting
description: The Reddit Data API enforces per-OAuth-client rate limits and returns 429 when
  exceeded. Reddit's public developer documentation pages were not fetchable from this run, so
  exact numeric ceilings have not been reconciled live; commercial tier ceilings are negotiated.
sources:
  - https://www.reddit.com/wiki/api
notes: Reddit's developer documentation surface is gated against automated fetch; exact rate-limit
  numbers and header names could not be reconciled in this pass.
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
  - name: OAuth client rate limit
    scope: oauth-client
    metric: varies
    limit: 'enforced per OAuth client; see Reddit /wiki/api for current per-minute allowances'
  - name: Commercial contract limit
    scope: contract
    metric: varies
    limit: 'negotiated per commercial contract'
policies:
  - name: OAuth Required
    description: All non-trivial Data API access requires OAuth authentication; rate-limit
      counters are tracked per client_id.
  - name: 429 Backoff
    description: When throttled, Reddit returns HTTP 429; clients should honor any Retry-After
      response and apply exponential backoff with jitter.
  - name: Commercial Use Requires Contract
    description: Commercial usage above the free tier requires a Reddit Data API commercial
      agreement; ceilings and pricing are negotiated.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com