specification: API Commons Rate Limits
specificationVersion: '0.1'
provider: ScottishPower
providerId: scottishpower
generated: '2026-07-27'
method: searched
created: '2026-07-27'
modified: '2026-07-27'
tags:
  - Rate Limiting
  - Open Data
  - Energy
description: >-
  Anonymous quota observed live on the SP Energy Networks Open Data Explore API.
  Verified 2026-07-27 with no API key and no account: every response carried
  X-RateLimit-Limit 5000 and an X-RateLimit-Reset of the next UTC midnight, with
  X-RateLimit-Remaining decrementing per call. The platform additionally exposes
  a per-dataset quota triple (X-RateLimit-dataset-*) in its CORS
  expose-headers list. Values are what the server returned; no tiered published
  rate card exists for this API.
sources:
  - https://spenergynetworks.opendatasoft.com/api/explore/v2.1/catalog/datasets
  - https://help.opendatasoft.com/apis/ods-explore-v2/
headers:
  limit: X-RateLimit-Limit
  remaining: X-RateLimit-Remaining
  reset: X-RateLimit-Reset
  datasetLimit: X-RateLimit-dataset-Limit
  datasetRemaining: X-RateLimit-dataset-Remaining
  datasetReset: X-RateLimit-dataset-Reset
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
  - name: Anonymous requests (domain-wide)
    scope: client
    metric: requests_per_day
    limit: 5000
    timeFrame: day
    reset: Daily at 00:00:00+00:00 (absolute timestamp returned in X-RateLimit-Reset)
    verified: '2026-07-27'
    evidence: "x-ratelimit-limit: 5000, x-ratelimit-remaining: 4982, x-ratelimit-reset: 2026-07-28 00:00:00+00:00"
  - name: Per-dataset requests
    scope: dataset
    metric: requests_per_day
    limit: null
    timeFrame: day
    note: >-
      The X-RateLimit-dataset-Limit / -Remaining / -Reset headers are declared in
      access-control-expose-headers but were not populated on the anonymous
      catalogue calls observed; the ceiling is not published.
authenticated:
  note: >-
    The Opendatasoft docs state that an authenticated user "can be granted
    access to restricted datasets and benefit from extended quotas for API
    calls". The raised ceiling is not published as a number and depends on the
    portal's own configuration. API keys are self-serve from
    https://spenergynetworks.opendatasoft.com/account/api-keys/.
throttled_response:
  status: 429
  body: >-
    {"errorcode": <number>, "error": "Too many requests on the domain. Please
    contact the domain administrator.", "call_limit": <number>,
    "limit_time_unit": "day", "reset_time": "<ISO 8601>"}
  source: components.responses.quota in the harvested OpenAPI
export_endpoints:
  note: >-
    The /exports endpoints have no row cap (unlike /records, which is capped at
    limit 100 without group_by), so a single export call is the efficient way to
    take a whole dataset without burning the daily request quota.