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: ThetaData
providerId: thetadata
generated: '2026-07-22'
method: searched
created: '2026-07-22'
modified: '2026-07-22'
tags:
  - Market Data
  - Rate Limiting
description: >-
  ThetaData does not rate-limit paid requests; it limits CONCURRENT requests,
  account-wide, set by the highest subscription tier held across asset classes
  (tiers do not stack — extra subscriptions add data scope, not throughput).
  Requests beyond the concurrency limit are queued (default queue 16,
  configurable up to 128); overflowing the queue returns 429. Free accounts
  are additionally rate-limited per minute.
sources:
  - https://docs.thetadata.us/Articles/Data-And-Requests/Concurrent-Requests.html
  - https://docs.thetadata.us/Articles/Getting-Started/Subscriptions.html
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
  - name: Free tier requests
    scope: account
    metric: requests_per_minute
    limit: 20
    timeFrame: minute
    notes: >-
      "There is a 20-requests/minute rate limit imposed on free accounts"
      (Subscriptions page, Free Data section); the tier tables on the same
      page list FREE as "30 reqs/min" — both values recorded verbatim.
  - name: FREE concurrent requests
    scope: account
    metric: concurrent_requests
    limit: 1
  - name: VALUE concurrent requests
    scope: account
    metric: concurrent_requests
    limit: 2
  - name: STANDARD concurrent requests
    scope: account
    metric: concurrent_requests
    limit: 4
  - name: PRO concurrent requests
    scope: account
    metric: concurrent_requests
    limit: 8
  - name: Request queue
    scope: terminal
    metric: queued_requests
    limit: 16
    notes: Default queue size; configurable up to 128 via request_queue_length. Overflow returns 429.
limit_count: 6