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: Trello
providerId: trello
created: '2026-05-04'
modified: '2026-09-17'
generated: '2026-09-17'
method: searched
reconciled: true
tags:
  - Rate Limiting
  - Kanban
description: >-
  Trello REST API rate limits, read from Atlassian's own rate-limits guide on 2026-09-17.
  This replaces an earlier bulk-sweep artifact that carried limits sourced to
  https://trello.com/pricing; the figures below are taken from the developer documentation
  and only limits Trello actually states a number for are recorded as numbers.
sources:
  - https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/trello/guides/rest-api/rate-limits/
docs: https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/trello/guides/rest-api/rate-limits/
headers:
  rateLimitLimit: null
  rateLimitRemaining: null
  rateLimitReset: null
  retryAfter: null
  note: >-
    THE RUNTIME GAP. Trello publishes no rate-limit response headers of any kind — no
    X-RateLimit-*, no RateLimit-* draft fields, and no documented Retry-After on the 429.
    An agent cannot read its remaining budget; it can only discover exhaustion by being
    refused. The single machine-readable signal is the symbolic error code in the 429
    JSON body, which identifies which ceiling was hit.
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
errorCodes:
  - code: API_KEY_LIMIT_EXCEEDED
    meaning: The per-API-key ceiling was exceeded.
  - code: API_TOKEN_LIMIT_EXCEEDED
    meaning: The per-token ceiling was exceeded.
  - code: API_TOKEN_DB_LIMIT_EXCEEDED
    meaning: >-
      The token exhausted its allotted database query response time. No quota figure is
      published for this limit.
  - code: API_TOO_MANY_CARDS_REQUESTED
    meaning: >-
      A single request asked for too many objects, canonically a board's cards with
      actions=all&filter=all.
limit_count: 3
limits:
  - name: Per API key
    scope: api_key
    metric: requests_per_10s
    limit: 300
    timeFrame: 10 seconds
    documented: true
  - name: Per token
    scope: token
    metric: requests_per_10s
    limit: 100
    timeFrame: 10 seconds
    documented: true
  - name: /1/members route
    scope: route
    path: /1/members
    metric: requests_per_900s
    limit: 100
    timeFrame: 900 seconds
    documented: true
    note: >-
      A request to /1/members counts against this route limit AND the key limit AND the
      token limit. Requests to nested resources under it (for example /1/members/me/boards)
      do not count against the route limit.
  - name: /1/membersSearch route
    scope: route
    path: /1/membersSearch
    metric: unspecified
    limit: null
    timeFrame: null
    documented: false
    note: >-
      Trello names this as one of three routes with "much stricter" special limits but
      publishes no figure. Recorded as an honest unknown rather than a guess.
  - name: /1/search route
    scope: route
    path: /1/search
    metric: unspecified
    limit: null
    timeFrame: null
    documented: false
    note: >-
      Named as a special-limit route with no published figure. An earlier version of this
      artifact asserted 50 requests per minute sourced to the pricing page; that number is
      not stated in Trello's rate-limit documentation and has been withdrawn.
escalation:
  rule: >-
    If more than 200 429 responses are returned for an API key within a 10-second window,
    Trello returns 429 for every remaining request on that key for the rest of the window.
  implication: Retry storms are actively penalised — back off rather than retry hard.
other_limits:
  - name: Response size limits
    description: >-
      Limits exist to stop a single request returning too many Trello objects, surfaced as
      API_TOO_MANY_CARDS_REQUESTED. Break large nested-resource requests into smaller calls.
  - name: Gateway timeout
    description: GET requests that exceed Trello's 30-second processing limit return 504.
  - name: Per-object limits
    description: >-
      Separate from rate limiting, Trello caps how many cards, checklists, stickers and
      similar objects a board or card may hold. Values vary by board and account and must
      be read at runtime via ?fields=limits.
    docs: https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/trello/guides/rest-api/limits/