name: ServiceNow API Rate Limits
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: ServiceNow
providerId: servicenow
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:
  - ITSM
  - Now Platform
  - Rate Limiting
description: ServiceNow's REST API rate limits are configured per instance by ServiceNow administrators
  via System Web Services > REST > API rate-limiting rules. There is no globally-published, fixed numeric
  limit; thresholds, scope (per user / role / IP), and warning/violation behavior are tenant-specific.
  When a rule fires, the API responds with HTTP 429 and a Retry-After header. Public ServiceNow product
  documentation describes the mechanism but not numeric defaults, and the docs.servicenow.com site is
  not directly reachable from public crawlers.
sources:
  - https://www.servicenow.com/docs/
notes: Numeric thresholds are configured per-instance and are not publicly documented. Reconciliation
  is limited to mechanism-level information.
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
headers:
  retryAfter: Retry-After
limits:
  - name: Per-instance configurable rate-limit rule
    scope: instance/user-or-role
    metric: requests_per_hour
    limit: see instance configuration
    notes: Administrators define numeric thresholds per user, per role, or per request URI. Default sample
      rules ship with the platform but are not a contractual SLA.
policies:
  - name: Configurable rule engine
    description: Rate limits are policies in the customer's instance, editable by admins. They can be
      applied per user, per role, per integration user, and per URI pattern, with separate warning vs
      violation thresholds.
  - name: 429 + Retry-After
    description: When a violation rule fires, ServiceNow returns HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header indicating
      seconds until the rule's window resets.
  - name: Disclosure
    description: Specific numeric thresholds are tenant-internal and disclosed to integrators by the
      customer's ServiceNow admin team, not publicly.
  - name: Backoff
    description: Honor Retry-After; apply exponential backoff with jitter on repeated 429s.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com