Unkey · Rate Limits

Unkey Dev Rate Limits

Two distinct notions of rate limiting apply to Unkey. First, Unkey's own management API (api.unkey.com / api.unkey.dev) is subject to workspace rate limits that scale with plan tier; commonly cited figures are on the order of ~60 requests/second on the Free tier rising to ~600 requests/second on paid tiers, but exact numbers are set per workspace and should be confirmed against current documentation. Second, and more importantly, rate limiting is a first-class product: the ratelimit.* endpoints let you define and enforce your own fixed-window limits for any identifier, independent of API keys, including per-identifier overrides within a namespace. Per-key ratelimits can also be attached at key creation or verification time.

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

It captures 5 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests.

The profile also includes 3 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled.

Tagged areas include API Keys, Rate Limiting, Authentication, Rate Limiting, and Quotas.

5 Limits Throttle: 429
API KeysRate LimitingAuthenticationRate LimitingQuotas

Limits

Management API Requests (Free) workspace
requests
~60 req/sec (indicative; confirm per workspace)
Workspace rate limit for the Unkey management API on the Free tier.
Management API Requests (Paid) workspace
requests
~600 req/sec (indicative; confirm per workspace)
Higher workspace rate limit for the Unkey management API on paid tiers.
Per-Key Ratelimit key
requests
configurable (limit + duration per key)
Fixed-window ratelimit attachable to an individual key, enforced during keys.verifyKey.
Product Ratelimit (ratelimit.limit) identifier
requests
configurable per namespace (limit + duration)
Standalone rate limiting for any identifier via ratelimit.limit / multiLimit, independent of API keys.
Ratelimit Overrides identifier
requests
configurable per override
Per-identifier overrides of limit and duration within a namespace (set/get/list/delete override).

Policies

Fixed Window
Unkey ships per-key and standalone ratelimits as fixed-window counters over a configurable duration.
Overrides
Specific identifiers can be granted higher or lower limits than the namespace default via ratelimit.setOverride.
Backoff Strategy
Clients should honor 429 responses and the returned reset/remaining values, applying exponential backoff with jitter.

Sources