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: University of California, Los Angeles
providerId: ucla
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-19'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Rate Limiting
description: >-
  UCLA publishes no rate-limit documentation of any kind. All 91 operations across its seven
  contracts run behind a Google Apigee gateway at api.ucla.edu, which is certainly enforcing
  quota per API Product, but not one contract declares a 429 response and no rate-limit header
  was observed on any live response. Quota is set when a campus unit approves an application's
  subscription to an API Product; that decision is not published anywhere. The library IIIF and
  digital-collections hosts additionally sit behind an Anubis proof-of-work bot challenge, which
  functions as an undeclared rate limit on automated clients.
notes: >-
  Verified 2026-08-19. No 429 declared in any UCLA contract; no Retry-After, X-RateLimit or
  RateLimit-* header observed on 401/403/404/500 responses from api.ucla.edu, qa.api.ucla.edu or
  iiif.library.ucla.edu. Ask api-support@it.ucla.edu for the quota attached to a given product.
sources:
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/ucla/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Default (Apigee product quota)
  scope: client
  metric: requests-per-minute
  limit: undisclosed
  notes: >-
    Enforced by the gateway per API Product and per App Key. Not published, not declared in any
    contract, and not discoverable before an access request is approved.
- name: Bot challenge (UCLA Library hosts)
  scope: client
  metric: proof-of-work
  limit: undisclosed
  notes: >-
    dataverse.ucla.edu and digital.library.ucla.edu answer HTTP 200 with an Anubis challenge on
    every path. An undeclared throttle on automated access rather than a published rate limit.
policies:
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Exponential backoff with jitter; honor Retry-After; harvest during off-peak hours.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com