The Waitwhile platform employs a number of safeguards against bursts of incoming traffic to help maximize its stability. Users who send many requests in quick succession may see error responses that show up as Too many requests (429).
There is also a concurrency limit when it comes to creating or updating data such as visits. If too many concurrent requests happen the server will respond with Location too busy (409).
API rate limits
We allow up to 5 requests per second.
The request limit is scoped per user or IP address if no user identifier is available. Calls to certain resources have stricter limits, and also count against the general limits. Treat these limits as maximums and don’t generate unnecessary load.
Warning: We may adjust limits to prevent abuse or enable well-behaved high-traffic applications at any time.
A basic technique for integrations to gracefully handle limiting is to watch for 429 status codes and build in a retry mechanism. The retry mechanism should follow an exponential backoff schedule to reduce request volume when necessary. We’d also recommend building some randomness into the backoff schedule to avoid a thundering herd effect.
Note: For Enterprise plans, we can review your needs and potentially provision higher limits.
Concurrent create or update visits
The concurrency limiter restricts the number of concurrent writes to a single location in order to enforce consistency of data. For a single location the platform can process a sustained rate of 1 write per second.
The response Location too busy (409) is shown when this limit is hit. Typically, the request can be retried after a short delay.
Problems with this limit indicate a stampede or very busy location with a lot of customers trying to create visits or staff updating visits at the same time. If you encounter this error frequently, please reach out to Support, for information on suggested mitigations.
Have additional questions or need assistance? Reach out to us via chat or at support@waitwhile.com.