Car API (carapi.app) · Rate Limits

Car Api Rate Limits

CarAPI enforces both per-day and per-minute rate limits scoped to the JWT token (per-account). Limits differ across plans and are signaled in the JWT payload via user.rate_limit_type ('soft' or 'hard'). Hard limits reject requests with HTTP 429; soft limits allow overage with charges. Free public dataset is available without authentication for limited endpoints.

Car Api Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Car API (carapi.app) on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.

It captures 4 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests_per_day and requests_per_minute.

The profile also includes 4 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled and quotaExceeded.

Tagged areas include Automobiles, Automotive Data, Vehicle API, VIN Decoder, and Rate Limiting.

4 Limits Throttle: 429 Quota: 429
AutomobilesAutomotive DataVehicle APIVIN DecoderRate Limiting

Limits

Base plan daily quota account
requests_per_day · day
1500
Base plan ($199/year). Per-minute cap also enforced.
Plus plan daily quota account
requests_per_day · day
3000
Plus plan ($249/year). Per-minute cap also enforced.
Premium plan daily quota account
requests_per_day · day
6000
Premium plan ($299/year). Per-minute cap also enforced.
Per-minute rate limit account
requests_per_minute
see CarAPI docs
Per-minute cap is enforced on every plan; specific value varies by plan and is communicated in account dashboard.

Policies

JWT scoping
Rate-limit tier ('soft' vs 'hard') is encoded in the JWT payload under user.rate_limit_type. Hard limits reject excess traffic with 429; soft limits permit overage and bill it.
JWT caching
Tokens expire after 7 days. CarAPI recommends caching JWTs to avoid generating a new token per request, which itself counts against quotas.
Data caching
CarAPI recommends caching frequently accessed data and using the 'modified' timestamp filter to refresh only changed records.
Quota reset
Daily quota resets on a 24-hour rolling basis; per-minute window is sliding.

Sources