Stack Overflow · Rate Limits

Stack Overflow Rate Limits

Machine-readable rate limit definitions for the Stack Overflow API surface. Captures per-tier quotas, burst behavior, response signaling, and recovery semantics. Defaults are scaffold values to be replaced with published provider limits.

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

It captures 5 rate-limit definitions, across the free, professional, and enterprise tiers, measuring requests_per_minute and requests_per_month.

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

Tagged areas include Answers, Code, Developer Community, Developer Tools, and Knowledge Base.

5 Limits Throttle: 429 Quota: 429
AnswersCodeDeveloper CommunityDeveloper ToolsKnowledge BaseProgrammingQ&AQuestionsStack OverflowRate LimitingQuotasThrottling

Limits

Free Tier Default api-key
requests_per_minute · minute
10
Free Tier Monthly Quota api-key
requests_per_month · month
1000
Professional Tier Default api-key
requests_per_minute · minute
100
Professional Tier Monthly Quota api-key
requests_per_month · month
100000
Enterprise Negotiated Limit contract
requests_per_minute · minute
1000

Policies

Backoff Strategy
Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter, honoring the Retry-After header when present.
Burst Handling
Short bursts above the steady-state limit are tolerated up to the documented burst ceiling before throttling engages.
Quota Reset
Monthly quotas reset at the start of each calendar month in UTC. Per-minute and per-second windows reset on a sliding-window basis.
Fair Use
Even on uncapped enterprise tiers, sustained usage that materially impacts shared infrastructure may be subject to fair-use throttling.

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/stack-overflow-rate-limits"
All rate limits 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/rate-limits?limit=25"

Discovery needs no key. Ratings and market analysis are Pro.

Get an API key

Free tier, no form to fill in. Signing in shares your email address with us — we store it to create your key and to recognise you if you sign in with another provider. See our Privacy Policy and Terms.

GitHub Google LinkedIn

A second provider on the same verified email joins the account you already have.