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: Rijksmuseum
providerId: rijksmuseum
created: '2026-05-29'
modified: '2026-05-29'
reconciled: true
tags:
  - Rate Limits
  - Open Data
  - Museum
  - API Key
description: >-
  Rijksmuseum data services apply a per-API-key daily request quota of 10,000
  requests across all REST endpoints (Collection search, Collection Details,
  Image Tiles, Usersets) and the OAI-PMH harvesting endpoint. There is no
  documented per-second / burst limit, but the Collection Search response window
  is capped so that `page * pageSize` cannot exceed 10,000 records — bulk
  consumers must switch to OAI-PMH (`ListRecords` with resumption tokens) or to
  the downloadable data dumps. Keys are issued for free via a Rijksstudio
  account.
sources:
  - https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/object-metadata/api/
  - https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/object-metadata/harvest/
  - https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/data/policy

policies:
  - id: rijksmuseum-daily-quota
    name: Per-API-Key Daily Request Quota
    description: >-
      Maximum requests per API key per day across the JSON REST endpoints and
      the OAI-PMH endpoint.
    scope: api-key
    type: quota
    metric: request
    limit: 10000
    timeFrame: day
    geo: global
    overageBehavior: deny
    headers: []
    notes: >-
      Quota is documented in the museum's developer guide as the maximum
      retrievable result window per consumer. Bulk consumers should use OAI-PMH
      harvesting (which supports resumption tokens beyond 10,000 records) or the
      complete dataset downloads.

  - id: rijksmuseum-search-window
    name: Collection Search Result Window
    description: >-
      The Collection Search API caps deep pagination: `p * ps` (or `page *
      pageSize`) cannot exceed 10,000. Requests for pages past that point return
      an error.
    scope: api-key
    type: window
    metric: result
    limit: 10000
    timeFrame: usage
    geo: global
    overageBehavior: deny
    headers: []
    notes: >-
      Mirrors the museum's own advanced-search UI behaviour and is not a true
      rate limit but a result-set ceiling. Use OAI-PMH for full-corpus access.

  - id: rijksmuseum-oai-pmh-pacing
    name: OAI-PMH Resumption Token Pacing
    description: >-
      The OAI-PMH endpoint paginates via `resumptionToken`. Tokens expire over
      time; harvesters must request the next batch promptly.
    scope: api-key
    type: token
    metric: request
    limit: -1
    timeFrame: usage
    geo: global
    overageBehavior: token-expired
    headers: []
    notes: >-
      No documented per-second cap, but Q42/SimpleOAIHarvester is the
      Rijksmuseum-endorsed reference implementation and pacing pattern.

defaults:
  authentication_required: true
  key_obtain_url: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio
  key_obtain_cost: free
  key_obtain_latency: instant