Cardano · Rate Limits

Cardano Rate Limits

Blockfrost enforces per-IP rate limiting on all Cardano API requests. Each IP address is allowed 10 requests per second with a burst allowance of up to 500 requests that refills at 10 requests per second. Daily request quotas are enforced per project based on the active subscription plan. Enterprise plans support custom rate limit configuration.

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

It captures 6 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests_per_second, requests_burst, and requests_per_day.

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

Tagged areas include Rate Limiting, Blockchain, and Cardano.

6 Limits Throttle: 429
Rate LimitingBlockchainCardano

Limits

Blockfrost Cardano API — sustained rate IP
requests_per_second · second
10
Applies to all endpoint requests identified by client IP address.
Blockfrost Cardano API — burst allowance IP
requests_burst · burst
500
Burst pool of 500 requests refills at 10 requests per second; useful for batch data ingestion.
Blockfrost Cardano API — Starter daily quota project
requests_per_day · day
50000
Day is measured from midnight to midnight UTC.
Blockfrost Cardano API — Hobby daily quota project
requests_per_day · day
300000
Day is measured from midnight to midnight UTC.
Blockfrost Cardano API — Developer daily quota project
requests_per_day · day
1000000
Day is measured from midnight to midnight UTC.
Blockfrost Cardano API — Enterprise daily quota project
requests_per_day · day
-1
Custom limits negotiated with Blockfrost support; IP whitelisting available.

Policies

Token bucket / burst
Requests are governed by a token-bucket algorithm; the bucket holds 500 tokens and refills at 10 tokens per second. Exceeding the bucket returns HTTP 429.
Daily quota reset
Daily request counters reset at midnight UTC regardless of the consumer's local timezone.
Backoff on 429
Clients receiving HTTP 429 should apply exponential backoff with jitter before retrying.
Enterprise custom limits
Enterprise subscribers may negotiate custom per-IP or per-project rate limits and whitelist trusted IP ranges through Blockfrost support.

Sources