# Rate limits

The Claid API uses a number of safeguards against bursts of incoming traffic to help maximize its stability. Image processing requests that come with relatively high intensity can be temporarily limited.

{% hint style="info" %}
By default, users may issue up to **120 requests per minute** and **4 request per second**. \
if you need to **expand the limits** to process even more images or use **image batch processing** to efficiently process multiple images, please [contact us](mailto:sales@claid.ai).
{% endhint %}

 To explore the remaining restrictions, every image processing response contains relevant headers:

* `RateLimit-Limit` indicates the request-quota associated with the user in the current time window.
* `RateLimit-Remaining` indicates the remaining requests that you can issue in the current time window.
* `RateLimit-Reset` is the number of seconds until the quota resets.

<details>

<summary>Example of a typical response headers</summary>

Let's explore the example of a typical response headers for an image processing request:

```http
HTTP/2 200
Content-Type: application/json
RateLimit-Limit: 120, 120;w=60, 4;w=1
RateLimit-Remaining: 118
RateLimit-Reset: 32
```

Here we can see that we have request limits:

* `120;w=60` which means 120 requests per 60 seconds.
* `4;w=1` which means 4 requests per 1 second.

Besides, the `RateLimit-Limit` header indicates that we got under the first limit of **120** **requests per minute**. This leaves us with **118** **remaining request** that we can send in the next **32 seconds**. When this time passes - the limits will be reset.

</details>

<details>

<summary>Example of a limits exceed response</summary>

If you exceed limits, the example of payload with response headers may look like this:

```http
HTTP/2 429
Content-Type: application/json
RateLimit-Limit: 4, 120;w=60, 4;w=1
RateLimit-Remaining: -1
RateLimit-Reset: 1

{
  "detail": {
    "error_code": "2001",
    "error_type": "general",
    "error_message": "Too Many Requests. Rate limit exceeded."
  }
}
```

Here we can see that we've got a <mark style="background-color:red;">`429 status code`</mark> which indicates that we exceeded the **4 requests per second** rate limit. Since we don't have any remaining allowed requests, we will be able to process new images again in **1 second**, when the limit will be reset.

</details>