Guidelines /

Rate Limiting

The Vimeo API limits apps to a certain number of calls per hour. Here’s what you need to know about it.

Advanced API Rate Limiting

We rate limit our Advanced API two different ways depending on the request:

  • Authenticated calls are limited to 1500 requests per user per 5 minutes.
  • Unauthenticated calls are limited to 7500 requests per day.

Authenticated calls are limited based on the user, while unauthenticated calls are counted towards your app.

These limits may be reduced if we are experiencing issues with the site.

Searching is treated a little differently for rate limiting. Normal rate limits do not apply, rather there is a separate rate limit for search. We do not make this limit public to discourage abuse, but we feel that it is adequate for most apps.

Simple API Rate Limiting

Because the Simple API does not have authentication or use app keys, it is limited based on IP address and user agent. Calls are limited to 3600 per hour.

How can I tell if I’m being rate limited?

We’ll return a couple headers with each API request to let you know how you’re doing:

  • X-RateLimit-Limit: 7500
  • X-RateLimit-Remaining: 7499
  • X-RateLimit-Reset: 1369058397

How can I avoid getting rate limited?

If you follow these simple suggestions you’ll greatly reduce the possibility of getting rate limited.

Caching

Store API responses locally, especially if you expect a lot of traffic. In general, don’t call the API on every page load. Instead, call the API independently and load from cache on each page load.

Scraping

Don’t make a bunch of calls all at the same time. Spread them out over a longer period so it doesn’t look like you’re scraping.

What happens if I get rate limited a lot?

If you’re continually getting rate limited, we may block your app or IP. For repeat offenders, we may block your other apps as well, and disallow you from creating new apps.

If you’ve been blocked when you shouldn’t have, or it was the result of a bug in your code that has since been fixed, contact us with the following information:

  1. Your app’s consumer key.
  2. Explain why you think your app was blocked.
  3. Describe in detail how you fixed the problem that you think was the reason for the block.