Aider does not impose application-level rate limits. It is a local CLI that runs entirely in the developer's terminal against the local Git working tree; no Aider-operated network endpoint exists. All request-rate and quota enforcement happens upstream at the LLM provider the user has bound to aider via API key (Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, Mistral, xAI, GROQ, Cohere, GitHub Copilot, Azure OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Vertex AI, Ollama, LM Studio, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint). Aider surfaces upstream 429 / rate-limit errors back to the terminal user but does not retry, queue, or smooth requests on the user's behalf beyond default LiteLLM behavior. Token-budget management — chat history size, repo-map token budget, in-chat-files token budget — is exposed via `/tokens` and the `--max-chat-history-tokens` / `--map-tokens` flags but is a context-window control, not a rate limit.
Aider Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Aider on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.
It captures 4 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests_per_second, varies, and tokens.
The profile also includes 5 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for upstreamThrottled and upstreamServerError.
Tagged areas include Rate Limiting, Open Source, AI Pair Programming, and BYO LLM.
Application-level rate limit (aider itself) process
requests_per_second
none — aider does not impose its own request-rate limit
Aider is single-process and single-user; concurrency is bound by the user's keyboard and the LLM round-trip latency. There is no app-level throttling, queueing, or batching layer.
Upstream LLM provider rate limit (pass-through) upstream provider (per API key / per account / per project)
varies
see upstream provider documentation — Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, etc.
Whatever requests-per-minute, tokens-per-minute, and concurrent-requests limits the chosen provider enforces apply directly. Aider surfaces the provider's 429 / error response to the user with no additional retry logic beyond what LiteLLM provides.
Repository map token budget session
tokens
1024
Default token budget for the tree-sitter repository map sent on each turn. Controlled by `--map-tokens` (default 1024, often raised to 4096 or 8192). This is a context-window control, not a rate limit.
Chat history token budget session
tokens
model-dependent
Aider automatically summarizes older chat history via the weak model when the budget is exceeded. Controlled by `--max-chat-history-tokens`.
Policies
BYO LLM pass-through
All inference happens at the upstream LLM provider the user has bound via API key. Aider neither aggregates requests across users nor adds a control plane in front of the provider. Whatever the provider's published rate limits are, they apply directly to the developer's key.
Provider errors surfaced verbatim
A 429 Too Many Requests from the upstream provider is surfaced to the terminal user with the provider's error message. Aider does not retry transparently; the user can re-issue the prompt manually or use `--retry-on-rate-limit` flags where supported by LiteLLM for the chosen provider.
Local-model exemption
When aider is bound to a local Ollama, LM Studio, or OpenAI-compatible endpoint there is effectively no rate limit — throughput is bounded by the user's hardware, not by an external billing system.
Token-budget management is not throttling
`/tokens`, `--max-chat-history-tokens`, and `--map-tokens` manage the size of the prompt aider sends, not the rate at which prompts are sent. They exist to keep prompts within the model's context window and to control upstream token spend, not to throttle the user.
No hosted service
Because aider has no SaaS endpoint, there is no per-account quota, per-key request rate, IP-based throttling, or burst allowance that Aider itself controls. The only "Aider rate limit" surface is the upstream provider's.
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