api.data.gov key rate limits

They are the throughput ceilings applied to Data.gov's Catalog API, and they differ sharply between credential levels. The cataloged telecommunications keyword-search record spells out the rule: "API access requires a free api.data.gov key with documented rate limits (DEMO_KEY: 30 requests/hour, 50/day)".

The limits bind in practice, not just on paper. The same record notes that "the telecommunications-filtered subset count was not retrievable during research because the API demo key was rate-limited" - a documented instance of DEMO_KEY exhaustion mid-query.

The fix is administrative rather than financial: personal api.data.gov keys are free, and the related api-rate-limits entry records the contrast - 30 requests per IP per hour and 50 per day for DEMO_KEY versus 1,000 per hour for personal keys.

Catalog APIs are discovery infrastructure; quota surprises there stall every downstream project that depends on enumeration.

• DEMO_KEY is for demos, not pipelines. At 30 requests/hour and 50/day, a nightly harvest of even a few hundred records cannot run on the shared key - register before building, not after the first 429.

• Silent truncation looks like missing data. A rate-limited subset count (as happened during research on the telecommunications filter) reads as an empty result unless you recognize the quota signature.

• Quotas shape architecture. At 1,000/hour on a personal key, incremental sync beats full-refresh designs against the 552,271-record catalog.

1. Register a personal key before prototyping. It is free and moves you from 30 requests/hour to 1,000/hour - the single highest-leverage configuration change available.

1. Handle HTTP 429 explicitly. The Catalog API signals quota breaches with 429; back off and resume rather than retrying in a tight loop.

1. Page with facets, not brute force. Use the GSA Catalog API v4's facet parameters so each request returns ranked, filtered metadata instead of paging raw results.

1. Reconcile counts against the catalog counter. The full catalog holds 552,271 datasets (site counter, 2026-08-21); a keyword filter returning fewer records than expected deserves a second attempt on a fresh quota window.

1. Remember the license layer beneath. Rate limits govern access, not reuse - each record carries its publisher's license URI, from US Government commercial delivery terms to commercial delivery terms 4.0.

These related entries and hubs sit next to this term: - dcat us metadata - keyless rest api - air freight logistics data - communications equipment data - atc classification - drug interaction data