> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getmcpulse.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Rate limits

> 10,000 payloads a minute per ingest key, counted in payloads rather than requests.

Ingest is limited to **10,000 payloads per minute, per key**.

## Payloads, not requests

A batch of 500 costs 500. Limiting requests instead would let one client send 500-item batches as fast as it liked and call it one unit of load.

## Over the limit

```
HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
retry-after: 34
```

`Retry-After` is in seconds and counts down to the end of the current window. The whole batch is refused — nothing is partially accepted.

The SDK does not retry. A refused batch is dropped, which costs a data point and nothing else.

## What that limit is actually worth

10,000 payloads a minute is roughly **166 tool calls per second, sustained**, from one server. Given the SDK flushes at 30 items or 5 seconds, hitting it takes real traffic rather than a misconfiguration.

If you are near it, split across [several keys](/api-keys/create) on the same MCP — one per deployment — since the limit is per key.

## The window is per API instance

The counter is in memory. That is fine on a single instance and becomes N× the intended limit the moment the API scales horizontally, at which point it moves to shared storage.

Stated rather than pre-solved, so that the behaviour you observe matches the behaviour that is documented.

## The monthly cap is a different thing

A rate limit protects the API from a burst. Your [plan's monthly allowance](/billing/plans) is a meter, and it answers differently:

```
HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
```

Recording stops until the 1st, or until you upgrade. The SDK treats it exactly as it treats a `429` — the batch is dropped, nothing is retried, and your tool call is unaffected.

The verdict is cached for a minute, the same way an API key is, so a database round trip never happens inside somebody's tool call. That is also why an upgrade takes up to a minute to take effect.

## Reads are not limited

Metric reads, account routes and the MCP endpoint carry no rate limit today. They are authenticated per user and bounded by what a person or an agent can plausibly ask for.

## Other bounds

|                                     |                           |
| ----------------------------------- | ------------------------- |
| Batch size                          | 500 payloads, `413` above |
| Tools per startup payload           | 500                       |
| `GET /v1/mcps/{id}/sessions?limit=` | 1–500, default 100        |
| MCP `get_sessions` limit            | 1–200, default 100        |

See [Ingest](/api/concepts/ingest) for the per-field limits.

## Related

* [Ingest](/api/concepts/ingest)
* [Errors](/api/concepts/errors)