aid: the-things-network
name: The Things Stack — Rate Limits and Fair Use
description: Rate-limit, concurrency, and fair-use policies that apply to The Things Stack APIs and to traffic on The Things Network community network. The Things Stack itself enforces per-endpoint and per-tenant rate limits via the IS/AS/NS/GS rate-limiter configuration. The community network additionally enforces a LoRaWAN airtime fair-use policy.
license: Apache-2.0
specVersion: 0.1
sources:
  - url: https://www.thethingsindustries.com/docs/reference/rate-limiting/
    type: Documentation
  - url: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/duty-cycle/
    type: Documentation
  - url: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/fair-use-policy-explained/1300
    type: Documentation
limits:
  - id: api-default-rps
    scope: api
    description: Default rate limit for HTTP/gRPC requests against the Identity Server, Application Server, Network Server, Gateway Server, and Join Server. Configurable per Things Stack deployment via ratelimit.profiles.
    metric: requests
    unit: per-second
    value: configurable
    notes: Self-hosted deployments configure burst and average rates per endpoint class. The Things Stack Cloud applies The Things Industries' production defaults.

  - id: api-burst
    scope: api
    description: Per-IP / per-token burst allowance enforced by the Things Stack rate limiter middleware.
    metric: requests
    unit: burst
    value: configurable

  - id: webhook-egress
    scope: integration
    description: Application Server webhook delivery is bounded by the per-tenant webhook concurrency configured in the AS.
    metric: concurrent-deliveries
    unit: per-tenant
    value: configurable

  - id: mqtt-subscriptions
    scope: integration
    description: Application Server MQTT broker enforces per-connection subscription and publish limits.
    metric: messages
    unit: per-connection-per-second
    value: configurable

  - id: ttn-community-uplink-airtime
    scope: community-network
    description: Fair-use policy on The Things Network community network limits each end device to roughly 30 seconds of uplink airtime per 24 hours.
    metric: airtime
    unit: seconds-per-day
    value: 30

  - id: ttn-community-downlink
    scope: community-network
    description: Fair-use policy on The Things Network community network limits each end device to ten downlink messages (including ACKs) per 24 hours.
    metric: messages
    unit: per-day
    value: 10

  - id: lorawan-duty-cycle
    scope: radio
    description: Regional regulatory LoRaWAN duty-cycle limit on the unlicensed ISM band (e.g. 1% on EU868 sub-bands). Enforced by the Network Server and gateway scheduler.
    metric: duty-cycle
    unit: percent
    value: 1
    notes: Region-dependent (EU868, US915, AU915, AS923, IN865, KR920, RU864, CN470, CN779, EU433).