USAspending.gov · Rate Limits

Usaspending Rate Limits

The USAspending API does not require authentication (no API key, no registration) and does not publish fixed, numeric, per-endpoint or per-account rate limits in its official documentation. General search and reference endpoints are described by the USAspending.gov community as usable with generous, informal limits for individual researchers. The documented exception is the asynchronous Bulk Download API (/api/v2/bulk_download/), where the project's own support channel advises limiting concurrent bulk download requests and backing off after failures, because zip-file generation is resource intensive on the backend; no specific numeric threshold for the bulk endpoints is published, and there is no documented way for a client to check how close it is to any limit.

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

It captures 3 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests, concurrent download jobs, and rows per page.

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

Tagged areas include Government, Federal Spending, Open Data, Rate Limiting, and Quotas.

3 Limits Throttle: 429
GovernmentFederal SpendingOpen DataRate LimitingQuotas

Limits

General API Requests unauthenticated / anonymous
requests
not published
No API key or registration required; no fixed numeric rate limit documented for search, agency, recipient, federal account, or reference endpoints.
Bulk Download Requests unauthenticated / anonymous
concurrent download jobs
not published (community guidance suggests 1-2 concurrent)
Bulk zip-file generation is backend-intensive; USAspending's own support channel recommends limiting concurrent bulk downloads and waiting several minutes after a failed request before retrying.
Search Result Window request
rows per page
varies by endpoint (recipient list caps at 1000 per page)
Individual endpoints cap the "limit" request parameter (e.g. the Recipient list endpoint documents a maximum of 1000 rows per page); there is no single global cap across the API.

Policies

No Authentication Required
All documented endpoints are publicly accessible without an API key, OAuth token, or account registration.
Bulk Download Backoff
Community and support guidance recommends waiting roughly five minutes after a failed bulk download request and reducing concurrent bulk download requests to one or two before retrying.
Retry-After Not Documented
The API does not document a Retry-After header or other machine-readable backoff signal for 429 responses; clients should implement their own conservative exponential backoff.

Sources

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Tools for rate limits

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  • 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.
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Call it yourself

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

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