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: UP42
providerId: up42
created: '2026-07-04'
modified: '2026-07-04'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Geospatial
- Earth Observation
- Satellite Imagery
- Rate Limiting
- Quotas
description: >-
  UP42 does not publish fixed numeric per-endpoint rate limits for the REST API.
  The practical governor on usage is the prepaid credit balance and, for
  enterprise accounts, budgets that cap credit spend rather than a per-minute
  request cap. Access tokens are short-lived (about 5 minutes), so clients must
  refresh tokens frequently and cache them for their lifetime. Long-running
  operations (tasking acquisitions, large orders, processing jobs) are
  asynchronous - clients poll order/job status or subscribe to webhooks rather
  than holding open a request. Callers should implement backoff on 429 responses.
notes: >-
  Numeric request-rate limits are not documented as of the review date. Treat the
  credit balance and enterprise budgets as the effective quota, refresh the 5-minute
  access token proactively, and honor Retry-After on 429 responses.
sources:
- https://docs.up42.com/developers/api
- https://docs.up42.com/getting-started/credits/pricing
- https://up42.com/pricing
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: REST API Requests
  scope: account
  metric: requests
  limit: not published
  notes: No fixed numeric request-rate limit is documented for the api.up42.com REST API.
- name: Credit Balance
  metric: credits
  scope: account
  limit: prepaid balance
  notes: Effective quota on orders/processing is the prepaid credit balance (100 credits = 1 EUR).
- name: Enterprise Budgets
  metric: credits
  scope: workspace
  limit: per budget
  notes: Enterprise accounts can define budgets that cap credit spend per workspace.
- name: Access Token Lifetime
  metric: seconds
  scope: token
  limit: '~300'
  notes: Access tokens are valid for roughly 5 minutes and must be refreshed.
policies:
- name: Token Refresh
  description: Cache the OAuth2 access token for its ~5 minute lifetime and refresh before expiry rather than requesting a new token per call.
- name: Asynchronous Polling
  description: Tasking, ordering, and processing are asynchronous; poll order/job status or use webhooks instead of blocking on a single request.
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Implement exponential backoff with jitter and honor Retry-After on 429 responses.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com