Rate limits & caching

Per-IP limits, the headers that report them, what happens at 429, and how caching keeps most requests free.

Limits

Surface	Limit	Window	Scope
`/api/v1/*`	120 requests	60 s, sliding	per IP
`/api/mcp`	60 requests	60 s, sliding	per IP
`/llms.txt`	`/llms-full.txt`	no limit	-
Markdown mirrors	no limit	-	-

The MCP limit is lower because tool calls always hit the database, whereas REST responses are served from the edge cache most of the time. Limits are generous for interactive agents; if you are building a bulk pipeline, use /llms-full.txt or paginate with limit=100.

Headers

http

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-RateLimit-Limit: 120
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 117
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1790081905
Cache-Control: public, max-age=0, s-maxage=300, stale-while-revalidate=3600
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

X-RateLimit-Reset is a Unix timestamp (seconds). Cached responses may carry slightly stale X-RateLimit-Remaining values; treat them as advisory.

When you are limited

http

HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Retry-After: 15
Cache-Control: no-store
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 0

{
  "error": {
    "code": "rate_limited",
    "message": "Rate limit of 120 requests per minute exceeded. Retry in 15s. Responses are cacheable - please cache them client-side."
  },
  "api_version": "1"
}

On MCP the body is a JSON-RPC error (code: -32000) with the same message. Sleep for Retry-After seconds, then continue. Do not retry in a tight loop.

Caching

Surface	Edge cache	Notes
/api/v1/products, /founders, /launches, /trending	5 min	stale-while-revalidate for 1 h
/api/v1/products/{slug}, /founders/{username}	5 min	Also refreshed instantly when the founder edits or an admin approves
/api/v1/categories	10 min	Counts are live at generation time
/api/v1/openapi.json, /api/v1	1 h	Static
/llms.txt, /llms-full.txt	1 h	Regenerated from live data
Markdown mirrors	5 min	Same as the product page
MCP tool calls	none	Always live
Error responses	404/400: 5 min · 429/500: never

Cache on your side too.

Honour Cache-Control, key your cache on the full URL including query parameters, and use updated_at from product details to decide when a record is worth refetching.

Implementation note: limits are enforced per serving instance, so a burst spread across regions may be allowed slightly more than the nominal number. Treat the figures above as the guaranteed floor.