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 Helsinki
providerId: university-of-helsinki
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-30'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Rate Limiting
description: 'The University of Helsinki publishes no rate-limit table, and the thirteen institution-operated
  OpenAPI documents confirm it rather than merely leave it unstated: NOT ONE of the twelve gateway specs
  declares a 429 response or any rate-limit header. The only API in the estate that declares 429 at
  all is the FinBIF Laji API, on 24 of its operations. The gateway is Gravitee, which supports quota
  and rate-limit policies per plan, so limits almost certainly exist per subscription — they are simply
  not described in any public artifact, and the plan documents that would carry them return 401. Anonymous
  surfaces (DSpace REST, three OAI-PMH endpoints) are unmetered in their documentation; harvest politely.'
notes: 'Measured 2026-08-30 by parsing every spec in openapi/_original/ for declared 429 responses and
  rate-limit headers. Gateway specs: zero. FinBIF: 24 operations.'
sources:
- openapi/_original/
- https://api.helsinki.fi/portal/environments/DEFAULT/configuration
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Gravitee gateway (all gw.api.helsinki.fi APIs)
  scope: subscription
  metric: undisclosed
  limit: not published
  notes: No 429 and no rate-limit header declared in any of the 12 gateway specs. Per-plan quota policy
    is likely but not publicly readable (plans endpoint returns 401).
- name: FinBIF Laji API
  scope: client
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: 429 declared on 24 operations with an application/json body — the only rate-limit signal anywhere
    in the estate.
- name: OAI-PMH and DSpace REST
  scope: client
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: Anonymous by design. No documented limit; resumption tokens pace large harvests.
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
method: derived