Wordnik · Rate Limits

Wordnik Rate Limits

Wordnik enforces request rate limits per API key (issued per Wordnik account), with both per-minute and per-hour ceilings. The hourly ceiling is the tier ceiling sold on the pricing page; the per-minute ceiling is a burst safeguard. Quotas may fluctuate as the system reconciles usage periodically, but Wordnik guarantees a key will never receive fewer calls than its plan permits. Remaining quota and absolute limits are reported on every response via X-RateLimit headers; consumers should inspect these and back off rather than retrying immediately.

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

It captures 5 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests_per_hour and requests_per_minute.

The profile also includes 5 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled, quotaExceeded, invalidKey, and forbidden.

Tagged areas include Rate Limiting, Dictionary, Language Data, and Quota.

5 Limits Throttle: 429 Quota: 429
Rate LimitingDictionaryLanguage DataQuota

Limits

Basic (free) — hourly ceiling key
requests_per_hour · hour
100
Free tier for nonprofit / research use; commercial users get a free trial here.
Hobby — hourly ceiling key
requests_per_hour · hour
1000
$10/mo subscription tier.
Pro — hourly ceiling key
requests_per_hour · hour
20000
$59/mo subscription tier.
Enterprise — hourly ceiling key
requests_per_hour · hour
45000
$149/mo subscription tier.
Per-minute burst ceiling key
requests_per_minute
see x-ratelimit-limit-minute response header
Wordnik enforces a per-minute restriction as well as the per-hour ceiling. The exact number is returned per-key in the response headers and is not advertised on the pricing page.

Policies

Inspect response headers
Every response includes x-ratelimit-remaining-hour, x-ratelimit-remaining-minute, x-ratelimit-limit-minute, and x-ratelimit-limit-hour. Consumers should track remaining quota per minute and per hour and throttle locally before Wordnik returns a 429.
Reconciliation behavior
Wordnik documents that the "remaining" value may fluctuate as the system reconciles limits periodically, but a key will never receive fewer calls than its plan permits. Treat the headers as advisory, not exact.
Backoff on 429
When the API returns 429, wait until the next minute boundary (for per-minute throttling) or the next hour boundary (for per-hour throttling) before retrying. Use an exponential backoff with jitter to avoid synchronized retry storms.
One key per account
API keys are issued per Wordnik account. Sharing keys across applications or users splits the quota; high-volume consumers should plan for one key per workload.
Tier upgrades
To raise the published hourly ceiling, upgrade to a higher subscription tier via developer.wordnik.com/pricing. Higher-than-Enterprise volumes require contacting apiteam@wordnik.com.

Sources