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: WTO
providerId: wto
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
tags:
  - World Trade Organization
  - Trade Statistics
  - Tariffs
  - Open Data
  - Rate Limiting
description: >-
  Rate limit profile for the WTO API Developer Portal (apiportal.wto.org).
  The WTO does not publish explicit rate limit headers or documented thresholds.
  Community R client documentation notes a practical guideline of no more than
  one request per second to avoid throttling. The API is free and requires a
  subscription key obtained via the portal registration flow.
notes: >-
  WTO has not published formal rate limit figures. The one-request-per-second
  guideline is derived from community client documentation (wtor R package).
  Replace with official limits if WTO publishes them.
sources:
  - https://apiportal.wto.org/
  - https://github.com/fabiansalazares/wtor
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  serviceUnavailable: 503
limits:
  - tier: free
    name: Free Tier Sustained Rate
    scope: api-key
    metric: requests_per_second
    limit: 1
    burst: 5
    timeFrame: second
    applies:
      - WTO Timeseries API
      - WTO Quantitative Restrictions API
  - tier: free
    name: Free Tier Practical Daily Guideline
    scope: api-key
    metric: requests_per_day
    limit: 10000
    timeFrame: day
    notes: Estimated reasonable daily usage ceiling; no official figure published.
    applies:
      - WTO Timeseries API
      - WTO Quantitative Restrictions API
policies:
  - name: Backoff Strategy
    description: >-
      Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter when receiving
      429 responses. Honor any Retry-After header if present.
  - name: Sequential Requests
    description: >-
      Community guidance recommends issuing no more than one request per second
      when making bulk or batch queries against the Timeseries API.
  - name: API Key Required
    description: >-
      All requests must include a valid subscription key (Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key
      or equivalent header) obtained from apiportal.wto.org. Keyless requests
      are not supported.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com