Rate Limits

API rate limits and how to handle them.

Default limits

Plan	Requests per minute	Concurrent requests
Free tier	60	10

Rate limits are applied per API key. If you need higher limits, contact us.

Rate limit headers

When you approach or exceed limits, responses include:

Header	Description
X-RateLimit-Limit	Maximum requests per minute
X-RateLimit-Remaining	Remaining requests in current window
X-RateLimit-Reset	Unix timestamp when the window resets

Handling rate limits

When rate limited, you’ll receive a 429 status code:

{
  "error": {
    "message": "Rate limit exceeded",
    "type": "rate_limit_error"
  }
}

Recommended retry strategy

import time
from openai import OpenAI, RateLimitError

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://www.opencompress.ai/api/v1",
    api_key="sk-occ-your-key-here",
)

def call_with_retry(messages, max_retries=3):
    for attempt in range(max_retries):
        try:
            return client.chat.completions.create(
                model="gpt-4o-mini",
                messages=messages,
            )
        except RateLimitError:
            wait = 2 ** attempt  # exponential backoff
            time.sleep(wait)
    raise Exception("Max retries exceeded")

The OpenAI SDK has built-in retry logic. By default, it retries rate-limited requests with exponential backoff.