Two separate ceilings apply to every account, and they fail in the same way but mean opposite things:
- A rate limit — how many calls per minute. Hitting it means slow down; the call would have succeeded a moment later.
- A credit allowance — how many calls per billing cycle. Running out means the month is spent; retrying will not help until you top up or the cycle renews.
They look identical in a cell. Telling them apart is the single most useful thing on this page, and it is covered under which limit did you hit.
The per-minute ceiling
| Plan | Rate limit | Concurrent calls | Credits / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 5/min | 1 | 200 |
| Starter | 60/min | 5 | 200,000 |
| Pro | 180/min | 20 | 1,000,000 |
| Mega | No limit | 50 | 4,000,000 |
Rate limit is calls per minute, measured per API key. Concurrent calls is a separate ceiling — how many may be in flight at the same moment — and it is the one that bites first when you fan out. Ten parallel workers on a Starter key trip its concurrency ceiling of 5 long before they get near its 60/min limit.
Where the table reads No limit, there is no per-minute ceiling at all. That is not the same as unlimited: the credit allowance and the concurrency ceiling still apply.
A per-minute limit is not a bucket you empty and then wait on. The limiter refills continuously, so a steady stream spread across the minute never trips a ceiling that the same number of calls fired in one second usually does. Spacing calls evenly is worth more than counting them.
Your own lower limit
A key can be capped below its plan's ceiling from the dashboard, under the key's restrictions. That is worth doing for any key you have handed to someone else: it caps the blast radius of a runaway loop at a number you chose, instead of at your plan's.
The effective limit is the lowest of the plan ceiling, your own setting, and any cap support has applied to the account.
Reading your usage as you work
The credit meter at the top of the sidebar shows what is left, refreshed while you work — which is the number to glance at before starting a long fill rather than during one. Analytics has the same figure with a per-source breakdown behind it.
Which limit did you hit
Both look the same in a cell, and they need opposite responses. The credit meter tells them apart: a number above zero means you were going too fast, and waiting a minute fixes it. Zero means the cycle's allowance is gone, and refilling changes nothing until it renews or you upgrade.
A fill that stops partway through is usually the first case. Wait, then refill — the rows that already resolved are not charged again.
Backing off correctly
Wait, then try again once. That is the whole technique.
When a key is rate-limited, the edge remembers it and holds that key in a short cooldown — around 50 seconds. Hammering during the cooldown does not shorten it. Backing off properly usually gets you through in one wait; retrying in a tight loop can stay locked out for minutes.
Repeated identical failures
There is a third throttle that has nothing to do with volume. If the same call keeps failing the same way — a malformed parameter, a missing required input — that exact call is throttled and the original error is replayed back to you.
This is a guard against a loop retrying a permanently broken call forever, and it costs nothing to avoid: an input the source rejected has to change before it is worth sending again. See errors.
Staying under the ceiling
- Stop recalculating what does not move. Country records, currency symbols and timezones change on a scale of years. A Values fill writes them once and never calls again — see the sidebar.
- Pass a range, not a column of formulas. A range argument is one request against the rate limit however many rows it covers; the per-row cost is charged in credits, not in requests. This is the single biggest lever if you are limited rather than out of credits. See formulas.
- Give each workload its own key. A sub-key with its own limit means a backfill job cannot starve your live traffic. See sub-keys.
Next
Every other way a call can fail, and which are worth retrying, is in errors. For what a call costs against your allowance rather than your rate, see credits and billing.