U.S. Geological Survey · Rate Limits

U S Geological Survey Rate Limits

USGS does not publish numeric rate limits for its public web services. Documentation steers high-volume / automated consumers toward the bulk GeoJSON feeds, ATOM feeds, and Python-based catalog download scripts rather than ad-hoc API polling. Specific throttling thresholds and headers are not documented on the public USGS pages reviewed.

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

It captures 2 rate-limit definitions, measuring varies.

The profile also includes 3 backoff/retry policies defined.

Tagged areas include Federal Government, Earth Science, Earthquake, Hydrology, and Open Data.

2 Limits
Federal GovernmentEarth ScienceEarthquakeHydrologyOpen DataRate Limiting

Limits

Earthquake / FDSN Web Service IP
varies
see https://earthquake.usgs.gov/data/comcat/
USGS recommends real-time GeoJSON feeds over repeated FDSN queries for automated applications; explicit per-second numeric limits are not published.
USGS Water Data IP
varies
see https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov/
Specific request-rate ceilings not documented on the public service pages reviewed.

Policies

Use Bulk Feeds for Automation
USGS explicitly recommends that automated applications consume the real-time GeoJSON / ATOM feeds rather than repeatedly polling the catalog API.
Acceptable Use
Federal information services expect courteous use; sustained excessive polling may be throttled at the network edge without prior notice.
429 Handling
Apply exponential backoff on transient failures; specific Retry-After timing is not published.

Sources

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

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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

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This rate limit 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/rate-limits/u-s-geological-survey-rate-limits"
All rate limits 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/rate-limits?limit=25"

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