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Every public product API call requires authentication. Missing or invalid credentials return 401 before product work starts. Use an API key or the scoped OAuth credential accepted by the endpoint. MCP requires authentication from the start, including Search. The following default limits apply per verified account. Read and write allowances are separate; creating or rotating API keys does not reset them. The first exhausted window returns 429 Too Many Requests. Retries count as requests even when the write is idempotent. Rate limits do not reserve workers or provider capacity, increase an approved execution budget, or authorize an action. Provider-specific and shared-capacity limits can return 429 earlier. Act’s underlying per-operation and concurrent-reader safeguards also apply.

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Personal

Your account keys and connected applications share your account’s allowance. A new token, device, or selected agent does not create another budget. You can still explore the website as a guest; its restricted guest session is separate from public developer API access.

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Business

Each verified member uses their own caller allowance. Seats and pooled workspace credits do not multiply a member’s request limit. A server integration’s application keys share the verified application owner’s budget across applications and keys. Ownership, membership, approvals, and spending checks remain required.

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Developers

Use application keys for Search, your own authorized account key for work you own, and each person’s OAuth grant for work on their behalf. Application Search keys cannot authorize Act. Assist and Publish require API-key authentication with the scopes documented for each operation. Subscriptions add credits, seats, and plan features; the default API request limits above remain the same. Contact Darwin with expected volume and traffic patterns for higher capacity.

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Read the limit signals

Successful Navigator responses include caller rate headers. On throttling, follow Retry-After; an hourly or shared-capacity cap may need a longer wait than the minute window.

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Recover safely

  1. Stop sending requests inside the exhausted window. Respect Retry-After and use exponential backoff with jitter, a maximum delay, and a maximum attempt count.
  2. Debounce interactive Search, cache appropriate read-only results, and avoid tight status-polling loops.
  3. Reuse a REST write’s Idempotency-Key with identical inputs after ambiguous delivery. MCP uses its tool’s idempotencyKey argument. Do not create a new key simply because a response was lost.
  4. Correct 400, 401, 403, or 404 before retrying. A pending approval/payment requestId identifies that exact request; it is not the write’s idempotency key.
Request limits, subscription credits, execution budgets, and external provider charges are different controls. Passing one does not bypass the others.
Last modified on October 19, 2026