RATE_LIMITED - Devotel Orbit Documentation

What this error means

RATE_LIMITED is returned with HTTP status 429 when your integration sends more requests per window than the current rate limit allows. The request is rejected before any work is done; nothing is sent and no credits are deducted. The response also carries a Retry-After header holding the same number of seconds as the body. Every response for this error carries this page’s address in meta.docs_url:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "RATE_LIMITED",
    "message": "Rate limit exceeded. Retry in 12 seconds.",
    "status": 429,
    "retry_after": 12
  },
  "meta": {
    "request_id": "req_01J9ZKQ3V8",
    "docs_url": "https://docs.orbit.devotel.io/errors/RATE_LIMITED"
  }
}

Cause

The limit is shared per API key, so anything that concentrates traffic on one key trips it. The most common causes are:

Situation	Why it trips the limit
A batch job firing sends in a tight loop	Requests arrive faster than the per-window budget
Several integrations sharing one API key	Independent services consume a single quota
Retrying failures immediately in a loop	Retries multiply the original load instead of replacing it
Polling a read endpoint every second	List and read calls count against the same limit as writes

How to fix it

Honor retry_after first. The envelope’s retry_after field (mirrored in the Retry-After header) is the number of seconds to wait before reissuing the request. Sleep for that long instead of retrying immediately; an immediate retry lands in the same window and is rejected again.
Fall back to exponential backoff when the field is absent. Other transient errors do not always carry a wait time; start at one second, double on each attempt, and add jitter so concurrent clients do not re-synchronize into a new burst.
Queue and pace batch work. Spread a bulk send over the window instead of firing it all at once; a steady drip stays under the limit where a burst does not.
Use one key per integration. Separate keys keep separate workloads from consuming each other’s quota, and make it obvious which integration is the loud one.

Once the window has passed, retry the original request unchanged; a 429 does not mean the payload was wrong.

Error Code Reference — RATE_LIMITED sits in the transient retry class: honor the returned wait time, otherwise back off exponentially.
Rate limits and cool-downs — the full runbook for limits, headers, and cool-down behavior.
Error Handling Examples — response-envelope handling patterns in code.

​What this error means

​Cause

​How to fix it

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What this error means

Cause

How to fix it

Related