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: Salsa
providerId: salsa
created: '2026-07-01'
modified: '2026-07-01'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Payroll
- Embedded Finance
- Fintech
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
- Throttling
description: >-
  Salsa is a partner-gated embedded payroll API and does not publish specific
  public rate-limit thresholds. Access is scoped to a partner API key (separate
  sandbox and production keys), and per-endpoint request limits are governed by
  the partner agreement. Standard HTTP 429 throttling with Retry-After and
  exponential backoff should be assumed. Money-movement and payroll-run
  operations are additionally gated by employer account standing, funding
  readiness, and onboarding status rather than by raw request throughput.
notes: >-
  Confirm concrete RPS/RPM limits, burst behavior, and any per-employer or
  per-partner concurrency caps with Salsa during partner onboarding. Values are
  not published publicly.
sources:
- https://docs.salsa.dev/reference
- https://docs.salsa.dev/docs/building-with-salsa
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Partner Request Rate
  scope: partner
  metric: requests
  limit: see partner agreement
  notes: Per partner API key; separate sandbox and production keys. Not published publicly.
- name: Per-Employer Operations
  scope: employer
  metric: requests
  limit: see partner agreement
  notes: Operations are additionally constrained by employer onboarding status and account standing.
- name: Payroll Run Concurrency
  scope: employer
  metric: jobs
  limit: gated by readiness
  notes: Payroll runs require funding readiness and pass through preview/confirm state gates, not raw throughput.
policies:
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter and honor Retry-After on HTTP 429.
- name: Readiness Gating
  description: Money-movement endpoints depend on employer/worker onboarding and account-standing state, surfaced via webhooks, rather than only rate limits.
- name: Environment Separation
  description: Sandbox and production use distinct base URLs and distinct API keys; limits and quotas are governed per environment.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com