Rate limits and API status

The Prolific API enforces rate limits per authenticated account (or per IP address, if unauthenticated). Most endpoints share a generous default limit, and a small number of endpoints have their own, stricter limits.

When a limit is exceeded, the API returns 429 Too Many Requests. See Managing high loads for how to detect and recover from this, including a distinct, non-rate-limit source of 429s caused by contention on payment operations.

Default limits

Unless a specific endpoint below states otherwise, it is subject to:

Scope	Limit
Unauthenticated requests	30 requests per day, per IP address
Authenticated requests	10 requests per second, per account

Endpoint-specific limits

Endpoints	Limit	Scope
Workspace invitations (`POST /invitations/`)	100 requests per hour	Per account

This endpoint-specific value is the current default and may be tuned over time as usage patterns evolve.

Checking API status

You can subscribe to our status page at https://status.prolific.com to be notified of platform-wide incidents or degraded availability, which are a different concern from per-account rate limiting.