Algorand · Rate Limits

Algorand Rate Limits

Rate limits for Algorand Algod and Indexer REST APIs depend on the infrastructure provider. The Algorand daemons themselves impose no hard rate limits when self-hosted; limits are enforced by managed service providers such as Nodely. The free tier (no API key) applies a 60 req/s per browser/frontend ceiling and global monthly quotas for backend traffic. Commercial tiers offer substantially higher throughput with per-key and per-IP limits.

Algorand Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Algorand on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.

It captures 7 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests_per_second, requests_per_month, gb_per_month, and requests_per_day.

The profile also includes 5 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled and quotaExceeded.

Tagged areas include Blockchain, Proof-of-Stake, Rate Limiting, and API Access.

7 Limits Throttle: 429 Quota: 429
BlockchainProof-of-StakeRate LimitingAPI Access

Limits

Free tier frontend requests per second ip
requests_per_second · second
60
Applies to browser/frontend traffic on the free public endpoints (no API key). Backed by 50 ms artificial latency injection per response.
Free tier monthly request quota global
requests_per_month · month
6000000
Aggregate monthly cap shared across all free-tier users for backend/bot traffic. Frontend browser traffic has a separate 150 GB data transfer cap.
Free tier monthly data transfer global
gb_per_month · month
150
Frontend bandwidth cap on the free tier; applies to browser-origin requests.
Unlimited tier requests per second per key key
requests_per_second · second
6000
Per API key or whitelisted domain on the Unlimited commercial plan.
Unlimited tier requests per second per IP ip
requests_per_second · second
500
Per IP address ceiling on the Unlimited commercial plan.
Business SLA tier requests per second per IP ip
requests_per_second · second
500
Per IP ceiling on the Business SLA annual plan.
Business SLA tier daily request quota account
requests_per_day · day
200000
Daily request cap on the Business SLA plan; resets at midnight UTC.

Policies

Retry on 429
On receiving a 429 Too Many Requests response, back off exponentially with jitter before retrying. Nodely does not document a Retry-After header, so implement client-side exponential backoff starting at 1 second.
Pagination for Indexer queries
Use cursor-based pagination (next-token) when querying large transaction or account result sets via the Indexer API. Paginating in moderate page sizes avoids spiking request rates and keeps individual responses fast.
Use testnet for development
Run development and integration tests against the free testnet endpoints (testnet-api.4160.nodely.dev, testnet-idx.4160.nodely.dev) to avoid consuming mainnet quota and to ensure idempotent testing with faucet funds.
LocalNet for unit testing
Use AlgoKit LocalNet (a local sandboxed Algorand network) for unit and simulation tests that do not require live network data, eliminating all network rate-limit concerns.
Self-host for unrestricted throughput
Operators requiring unlimited throughput can run their own Algod and Indexer daemons. The software is open-source (go-algorand, algorand/indexer) and imposes no built-in per-request rate limits.

Sources