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: Seismic
providerId: seismic
created: '2026-05-04'
method: searched
modified: '2026-09-17'
reconciled: true
tags:
- Sales Enablement
- Content Management
- Rate Limiting
description: Seismic enforces tiered rate limits per tenant on a 60-second rolling window. Limits are
  scoped to the tenant (not the API key), and exceeding them returns HTTP 429 with a structured JSON body.
  Customers needing higher thresholds must request an exemption from Seismic support. Strict enforcement
  began February 27, 2023.
sources:
- https://developer.seismic.com/seismicsoftware/reference/rate-limiting
headers:
  remaining: X-Seismic-Remaining-Calls
  total: X-Seismic-Total-Calls
  retry_after: null
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Tier 1 — LiveDoc generation
  scope: tenant
  metric: requests_per_minute
  limit: 10
  timeFrame: minute
  notes: Applies to "Generate a LiveDoc" endpoints. Protects livedoc generation servers.
- name: Tier 1.5 — LiveSend link creation
  scope: tenant
  metric: requests_per_minute
  limit: 30
  timeFrame: minute
  notes: Applies to "Create a livesend link" endpoints. Protects livesend generation servers.
- name: Tier 2 — Library / workspace folder listing
  scope: tenant
  metric: requests_per_minute
  limit: 60
  timeFrame: minute
  notes: Applies to library and workspace folder listing endpoints. Reduces scraping for file updates.
- name: Tier 3 — Default
  scope: tenant
  metric: requests_per_minute
  limit: 600
  timeFrame: minute
  notes: Default limit for all other endpoints.
policies:
- name: 60-second rolling window
  description: Limits are evaluated against a 60-second rolling window per tenant; the X-Seismic-Total-Calls
    and X-Seismic-Remaining-Calls headers report current state.
- name: 429 response body
  description: When throttled, Seismic returns a JSON body with statusCode, message ("Try again in N seconds"),
    clientId, and tenant. Use the message to size backoff.
- name: Backoff
  description: Apply exponential backoff with jitter, honoring the seconds-to-retry value in the 429 message
    body.
- name: Exemption process
  description: Higher-volume tenants can request temporary or permanent exemptions through Seismic support
    with a documented use case.
- name: No Retry-After header
  description: Seismic returns no Retry-After on 429. The number of seconds to wait is embedded in the
    prose message body ("Rate limit is exceeded. Try again in N seconds"), so a client must parse a sentence
    to size its backoff.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
verified:
  checked: '2026-09-17'
  url: https://developer.seismic.com/seismicsoftware/reference/rate-limiting
  http_status: 200
  detail: Re-read from the provider rate-limiting reference on 2026-09-17. All four tiers, both response
    headers and the 429 message form match this artifact exactly. The pointer previously wired in apis.yml
    (/seismicsoftware/docs/rate-limits) is a 404; the live page is /seismicsoftware/reference/rate-limiting.