# Problems with API stability, rate limiting

**URL:** <https://community.purpleair.com/t/problems-with-api-stability-rate-limiting/6567>\
**Category:** API\
**Created:** [September 20, 2023, 5:06pm UTC](https://community.purpleair.com/t/problems-with-api-stability-rate-limiting/6567 "2023-09-20T17:06:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Marcin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.purpleair.com/marcin/32/3615_2.png) [@Marcin](https://community.purpleair.com/u/Marcin)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2023, 5:06pm UTC](https://community.purpleair.com/t/problems-with-api-stability-rate-limiting/6567/1 "2023-09-20T17:06:03Z")

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Hi,

I tried to resurrect my old project [Purp](https://github.com/MarcinZukowski/purp) to better visualize PurpleAir data, it went dead with the new API changes.

After adapting it to the new API, I noticed a few main issues:

- the rate limits seem _extremely_ excessive - it seems enough to make 2-3 requests a second and I’m getting 429 / “RateLimitExceededError”. I understand some limits, but this is not reasonable at all, and prevents some usage models
- yesterday I was getting random “payment needed” errors, today they are gone. Still, very weird

These issues make API usage super cumbersome. It’s very hard to design even a simple app and not to hit these issues.

Are these constraints documented somewhere? And if they are the way they seem to be, any plans on changing these?

Thanks!  
m.

P.S. As a side note, the session time at [https://develop.purpleair.com](https://develop.purpleair.com) is super short, can’t tell for sure, but it seems to be logging me out after ~1 hour or so. That’s, again, totally unreasonable.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Marcin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.purpleair.com/marcin/32/3615_2.png) [@Marcin](https://community.purpleair.com/u/Marcin)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2023, 5:15pm UTC](https://community.purpleair.com/t/problems-with-api-stability-rate-limiting/6567/2 "2023-09-20T17:15:23Z")

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One more thing,I randomly am redirected to [purpleair-over-quota-2.appspot.com](http://purpleair-over-quota-2.appspot.com) (see the image attached), and these requests fail.

 ![Screenshot 2023-09-20 at 10.08.55](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/purpleair/original/2X/c/c5e2275d329671b1f13f7e2ab060686b9956b0c6.png)