Every day many thousands of developers make requests to the Twitter API. To help manage the sheer volume of these requests, limits are placed on the number of requests that can be made. These limits help us provide the reliable and scalable API that our developer community relies on.
The maximum number of requests that are allowed is based on a time interval, some specified period or window of time. The most common request limit interval is fifteen minutes. If an endpoint has a rate limit of 900 requests/15-minutes, then up to 900 requests over any 15-minute interval is allowed.
Rate limits are applied based on which authentication method you are using. For example, if you are using OAuth 1.0a User Context, you will have one limit per time period for each set of users’ access tokens, while if you are using OAuth 2.0 Bearer Token, you will have a separate limit per time period for requests made by your app. When these limits are exceeded, an error is returned. Keep reading to learn more about these details and tips on how to avoid being rate limited.
Rate limits and authentication method
Rate limits are set at both the developer App and the user access token levels:
OAuth 2.0 Bearer Token: per-developer App
All Twitter API v1.1 endpoints accept this authentication method, and therefore will limit you to only make a certain number of requests to endpoints on behalf of your developer app. When using this authentication method, rate limits are determined by the number of requests you make using a Bearer Token. If an endpoint allows for 450 requests per rate limit window, then you can make 450 requests per window on behalf of your App by passing a Bearer Token. This limit is considered completely separate from the OAuth 1.0a User Context limit.
OAuth 1.0a User Context: per-set of user access token
Tweet lookup and recent search allow for you to authenticate on behalf of a user. For example, if you would like to retrieve private metrics from Tweets, you would need to authenticate with the user tokens associated with that user, which can be generated by using the 3-legged OAuth flow. If ten users have authorized your developer App, and up to 900 requests per 15-minute interval can be made on behalf of each user, you should be able to make up to 9000 requests on behalf of these users. This limit is considered completely separate from per-application Bearer Token limits.
Please note
Users' rate limits are shared across all apps that they have authorized and the Twitter application. For example, if a specific user likes 20 Tweets on the Twitter mobile application and likes 20 Tweets on a third-party application within a 24 hour period of time, the 40 requests would pull out of the same per user rate limit bucket. That means that if this endpoint has a user rate limit of 1,000 requests per 24 hours, then this user would be able to like 960 more Tweets within that 24 hour period of time across all Twitter and third-party apps.
Standard API v1.1 rate limits per window
POST endpoints
The standard API rate limits described in this table refer to POST endpoints. These rate limits apply to the standard API endpoints only, does not apply to premium APIs.
The 300 per 3 hours is with the POST statuses/update and POST statuses/retweet/:id endpoints is a combined limit. You can only post 300 Tweets or Retweets during a 3 hour period.
For example, if your Twitter app makes 200 requests to the POST statuses/update endpoint within a three hour period, your app will only be able to make 100 requests to the POST statuses/retweet/:id endpoint during that period.
GET endpoints
The standard API rate limits described in this table refer to GET (read) endpoints. Note that endpoints not listed in the chart default to 15 requests per allotted user. All request windows are 15 minutes in length. These rate limits apply to the standard API endpoints only, does not apply to premium APIs.
Endpoint
Requests / window per user
Requests / window per app
GET account/verify_credentials
75
0
GET application/rate_limit_status
180
180
GET favorites/list
75
75
GET followers/ids
15
15
GET followers/list
15
15
GET friends/ids
15
15
GET friends/list
15
15
GET friendships/show
180
15
GET geo/id/:place_id
75
0
GET help/configuration
15
15
GET help/languages
15
15
GET help/privacy
15
15
GET help/tos
15
15
GET lists/list
15
15
GET lists/members
900
75
GET lists/members/show
15
15
GET lists/memberships
75
75
GET lists/ownerships
15
15
GET lists/show
75
75
GET lists/statuses
900
900
GET lists/subscribers
180
15
GET lists/subscribers/show
15
15
GET lists/subscriptions
15
15
GET search/tweets
180
450
GET statuses/lookup
900
300
GET statuses/mentions_timeline
75
0
GET statuses/retweeters/ids
75
300
GET statuses/retweets_of_me
75
0
GET statuses/retweets/:id
75
300
GET statuses/show/:id
900
900
GET statuses/user_timeline
900
1500
GET trends/available
75
75
GET trends/closest
75
75
GET trends/place
75
75
GET users/lookup
900
300
GET users/search
900
0
GET users/show
900
900
GET users/suggestions
15
15
GET users/suggestions/:slug
15
15
GET users/suggestions/:slug/members
15
15
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