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: Snapchat
providerId: snapchat
created: '2026-05-04'
# 2026-08-13: upgraded generated -> searched. Re-fetched
# https://developers.snap.com/marketing-api/Ads-API/rate-limits and confirmed both published
# numbers verbatim ("the App is able to support an overall average volume of 20 requests/second,
# individual Access tokens issued by the App can make requests at an average of 10 requests/second")
# and the 429 guidance. Also confirmed the negative: Snap documents NO rate-limit response headers.
method: searched
modified: '2026-08-13'
reconciled: true
tags:
  - Advertising
  - AR
  - Marketing
  - Social Media
  - Rate Limiting
description: Snap publishes two-level rate limits on its Marketing API. App-scope limits apply across
  every Access Token issued to a registered Snap developer application; token-scope limits apply per individual
  Access Token. When either average is exceeded the API returns HTTP 429 and Snap recommends slowing the
  request rate. Snap does not document specific Retry-After or X-RateLimit headers in the published rate-limits
  page.
limit_count: 2
sources:
  - https://developers.snap.com/marketing-api/Ads-API/rate-limits
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  quotaExceeded: 429
headers:
  request: []
  response: []
  retry_after: false
  note: >-
    Confirmed absent 2026-08-13. Snap's rate-limits page publishes the caps and the 429 but names no
    X-RateLimit-*, RateLimit-* (RFC 9239 draft) or Retry-After header, and none appears in any of
    the 13 OpenAPI files in this repo. A client has no runtime signal of remaining quota and cannot
    compute a correct backoff delay from the response — it only learns it is throttled after the
    fact.
limits:
  - name: Marketing API - Application scope
    scope: application
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 20
    timeFrame: second
    notes: Average sustained limit across all Access Tokens issued to the registered application.
  - name: Marketing API - Access Token scope
    scope: key
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 10
    timeFrame: second
    notes: Average sustained limit per individual OAuth Access Token.
policies:
  - name: Backoff Strategy
    description: When the API returns 429, Snap's documented guidance is to lower the rate at which the
      app sends requests. Specific Retry-After header behavior is not documented; clients should implement
      exponential backoff with jitter.
  - name: Two-level scoping
    description: Both the application-wide cap (20 req/s) and the per-token cap (10 req/s) apply simultaneously.
      Distributing load across more tokens does not bypass the application-wide ceiling.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com