European Space Agency (ESA) · Rate Limits

Esa Rate Limits

Rate limits for ESA public APIs are primarily defined by the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE) free-tier quotas. Sentinel Hub allows 300 requests/minute and 300 processing units/minute. openEO is limited to 12 requests/minute (1 per 5 seconds) with a maximum of 2 concurrent requests. S3 supports 4 concurrent connections at 20 MB/s each. Data Workspace allows 2 concurrent processing orders. ESA Gaia TAP, ESASky Legacy TAP, and CCI ESGF do not publish explicit numeric rate limits. Space Weather HAPI access tokens expire after 300 seconds.

Esa Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for European Space Agency (ESA) on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.

It captures 9 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests, processing_units, concurrent_requests, concurrent_connections, and bandwidth.

The profile also includes 5 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled, unauthorized, forbidden, and serverError.

Tagged areas include Earth Observation, Copernicus, Space Weather, Rate Limiting, and Throttling.

9 Limits Throttle: 429
Earth ObservationCopernicusSpace WeatherRate LimitingThrottling

Limits

Sentinel Hub API Requests per Minute user
requests · minute
300
300 requests/minute and 300 processing units/minute for the Sentinel Hub API. Exceeding triggers HTTP 429.
Sentinel Hub Processing Units per Minute user
processing_units · minute
300
Parallel limit to the request rate; each request may consume multiple processing units depending on area and complexity.
openEO Requests per Minute user
requests · minute
12
Approximately 1 request per 5 seconds. Intended to manage cloud processing resource fairness across free-tier users.
openEO Concurrent Requests user
concurrent_requests · concurrent
2
Maximum 2 simultaneous openEO batch jobs or processing requests per user.
S3 Concurrent Connections user
concurrent_connections · concurrent
4
Up to 4 concurrent S3 connections, each at 20 MB/s bandwidth. Exceeding monthly 12 TB transfer quota drops to 1 connection at 1 MB/s.
S3 Bandwidth per Connection connection
bandwidth · continuous
20
Each S3 connection is throttled to 20 MB/s under normal quota conditions.
Active Sessions account
active_sessions · concurrent
100
Maximum 100 active sessions per account across all Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem API endpoints.
Data Workspace Concurrent Processing Orders user
concurrent_orders · concurrent
2
Maximum 2 simultaneous Data Workspace offline product orders.
Space Weather HAPI Token Validity token
token_lifetime · second
300
M2M Bearer tokens expire after 300 seconds. Tokens must be refreshed before expiry using the SSO endpoint at https://sso.s2p.esa.int/realms/swe/protocol/openid-connect/token.

Policies

Monthly Quota Reset
All Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem free-tier quotas (Sentinel Hub requests, openEO credits, Data Workspace products, Direct HTTP COG requests) reset on the first calendar day of each month.
Transfer Quota Throttling
When a user exceeds the 12 TB 30-day rolling S3/OData/STAC transfer limit, bandwidth is reduced to 1 MB/s with 1 concurrent connection. Full bandwidth is restored when the rolling window drops below the quota.
Copernicus Authentication Token Lifetime
Access tokens for authenticated Copernicus APIs are valid for 10 minutes and can be refreshed within a 60-minute refresh window using the OpenID Connect token endpoint.
HAPI Token Refresh
ESA Space Weather HAPI M2M tokens must be refreshed before the 300-second expiry. Implement proactive token renewal in programmatic clients to avoid failed requests.
Exponential Backoff on 429
All ESA/Copernicus APIs return HTTP 429 on rate limit violation. Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter before retrying.

Sources