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: Unbabel
providerId: unbabel
created: '2026-07-03'
modified: '2026-07-03'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Translation
- LangOps
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
description: >-
  Unbabel does not publish fixed numeric rate limits for the Translation API
  (tapi/v2) in its public developer documentation. Because translation is an
  asynchronous, enterprise, quote-based service, throughput is governed in
  practice by the customer's contracted translation volume/commitment rather
  than by a documented per-second or per-minute request cap. Submitting a
  translation returns immediately with a job uid; clients then poll the
  translation/{uid} endpoint or receive a callback, so polling should be
  reasonable and backed off rather than tight-looped.
notes: >-
  No per-account or per-endpoint numeric request limit is documented as of the
  review date. Confirm any operational limits with Unbabel during onboarding.
  The standalone Widn.AI API is governed by its own separate limits.
sources:
- https://developers.unbabel.com
- https://developers.unbabel.com/docs/introduction
- https://unbabel.com/
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Translation API Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: No fixed numeric request-rate limit is documented for the tapi/v2 API.
- name: Translation Volume
  scope: account
  metric: words
  limit: per contract
  notes: Effective throughput is bounded by the customer's committed/quoted monthly translation volume.
- name: Job Status Polling
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: Poll translation/{uid} with backoff, or use a callback_url, since jobs complete asynchronously.
policies:
- name: Asynchronous Processing
  description: Translation and mt_translation submissions return a job uid immediately; results are retrieved later by uid or delivered to a callback URL.
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Clients should poll job status with exponential backoff and honor Retry-After on any 429 responses.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com