Getty Images · Rate Limits

Getty Images Rate Limits

Published rate-limit behaviour for the Getty Images API v3 and the Getty Images MCP server, read from the provider's own documentation on 2026-09-12. This replaces the 2026-05-04 scaffold, whose tiers, numbers and RateLimit-* headers were bulk-sweep defaults Getty does not publish and does not return.

Getty Images Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Getty Images on the APIs.io network, in the API Commons Rate Limits shape.

It captures 3 rate-limit definitions, measuring queries_per_second and concurrent_pending_generations.

Limit state is signalled in the limit, remaining, reset, and retryAfter response headers, and an exhausted limit returns HTTP 429.

The profile also includes response codes documented for throttled and quotaExceeded.

Tagged areas include Image, Media, Photos, Video, and Stock Photography.

3 Limits Exhausted: HTTP 429 Quota: 429 limitremainingresetretryAfter
Transcribed from the provider's documentation on 2026-09-12 — developer.gettyimages.com/docs/.
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ImageMediaPhotosVideoStock PhotographyArtificial IntelligenceSearchContent LicensingDigital Asset ManagementMCP

Limits

api-key
queries_per_second · second
Getty documents the MECHANISM but not the NUMBER: "The Getty Images API throttles client requests based on limits associated with the client's API Key. These rate limits are configured when a customer is initially setup to use the API." The only figure that appears anywhere is an explicitly hypothetical illustration — "A rate limit could be defined as 5 QPS for example" — which is not a published limit and is not recorded as one here. Limits are adjusted by Getty support staff on request.
account
concurrent_pending_generations · concurrent
A second, independent limit on the Generative AI endpoints: the number of generations that may be pending at once. Getty publishes no number for it. Critically, exceeding it returns the SAME 429 as the QPS limit, so a client under its QPS limit that still sees 429 on /v3/ai/image-generations/* is hitting concurrency — the two causes are indistinguishable from the response.
mcp-endpoint
queries_per_second · second
20
The one hard published number in Getty's entire rate-limit surface: "Throttling – calls are throttled at a rate of 20 queries per second." It applies to the MCP server, not the REST API.

Sources

Work with this as data

Every rate limit here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for rate limits

4 MCP tools reach this
  • find_rate_limitsBrowse and filter every rate limit in the catalog.
  • apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
  • resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
  • find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.
All 92 tools →

Call it yourself

curl for this page
This rate limit 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/rate-limits/getty-images-rate-limits"
All rate limits 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/rate-limits?limit=25"

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