Handle Typeform API rate limits and back off correctly
domain: typeform.com · 8 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Auth: Authorization: Bearer {access_token}; the 2 req/s budget is scoped to the account owning the token.
Documented limit: 2 requests per second per Typeform account for the Create API and Responses API — throttle clients to <=2 req/s (token bucket or sleep-based).
The limit is per account (the account owning the token), not per token — multiple workers sharing an account share the budget.
Webhooks and Embed SDKs are not subject to this client-request limit (webhooks are Typeform calling you).
Typeform error responses always include a `code` field; `description`, `field`, and `in` may also appear for validation errors — branch retry logic on `code` (retry 5xx/503, don't retry 4xx validation errors).
The exact status code returned on exceeding 2 req/s is not explicitly documented — handle 429 and 5xx defensively with exponential backoff rather than assuming one specific code.
Don't conflate this with webhook DELIVERY retries (Typeform calling your endpoint: 30s timeout, tiered retry schedule) — separate system, separate rules.
Official docs: https://www.typeform.com/developers/get-started/ ; https://www.typeform.com/developers/troubleshooting/
Known gotchas
The 2 req/s figure applies specifically to the Create API and Responses API per the Get Started docs.
Typeform staff have described enforcement as 'fair use' with no hard limit in community threads — treat 2 req/s as the documented guidance and verify enforcement empirically before hardening production logic on it.
Error objects only guarantee `code` — don't assume description/field/in are present in generic handlers.
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