Rate Limits

ARouter enforces rate limits to ensure fair access and protect service availability. Making additional accounts or API keys does not increase your rate limits — capacity is governed globally per account.

Checking Your Current Limits

To check the rate limit or credits remaining on an API key, make a GET request to /v1/key:

Python
Node.js
cURL

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.arouter.ai/v1/key",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {AROUTER_API_KEY}"}
)
print(response.json())

const response = await fetch("https://api.arouter.ai/v1/key", {
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.AROUTER_API_KEY}` },
});
const keyInfo = await response.json();
console.log(keyInfo);

curl https://api.arouter.ai/v1/key \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AROUTER_API_KEY"

A valid API key returns:

{
  "data": {
    "label": "my-key",
    "limit": 100.0,
    "limit_reset": "monthly",
    "limit_remaining": 72.45,
    "usage": 27.55,
    "usage_daily": 2.10,
    "usage_weekly": 8.40,
    "usage_monthly": 27.55,
    "is_free_tier": false
  }
}

Field	Description
`limit`	Credit limit for this key (null = unlimited)
`limit_reset`	When the limit resets (`daily`, `weekly`, `monthly`, or null)
`limit_remaining`	Credits remaining before the key is blocked
`usage`	All-time credits consumed
`usage_daily` / `_weekly` / `_monthly`	Usage for the current UTC period
`is_free_tier`	Whether the account has purchased credits before

Free Tier Limits

Models with IDs ending in :free are available without purchasing credits, subject to these limits:

Condition	RPM	RPD
No paid credits purchased	20 req/min	50 req/day
At least $5 in credits purchased	20 req/min	1,000 req/day

Free tier limits apply to free model variants (:free suffix) only. Paid models require a credit balance.

DDoS Protection

Cloudflare’s DDoS protection automatically blocks requests that dramatically exceed reasonable usage patterns. These blocks are temporary and lift once traffic normalizes.

Negative Balance

If your account has a negative credit balance, you may see 402 Payment Required errors — including on free models. Adding credits to bring your balance above zero restores access.

Per-Key Spending Limits

You can configure spending limits on individual API keys to control costs:

Limit: Maximum credits the key can consume
Reset interval: daily, weekly, monthly, or never

Set limits when creating or updating a key via the Key Management API.

Model-Specific Limits

Some high-demand models may have additional per-model rate limits independent of your account’s overall quota. If you encounter 429 Too Many Requests errors on a specific model, consider:

Using the :floor or :nitro variant to access different provider endpoints
Specifying an ordered candidate model list to spread load across models
Implementing exponential backoff and retry logic in your client

See Error Handling for retry best practices.

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Checking Your Current Limits

Free Tier Limits

DDoS Protection

Negative Balance

Per-Key Spending Limits

Model-Specific Limits

​Checking Your Current Limits

​Free Tier Limits

​DDoS Protection

​Negative Balance

​Per-Key Spending Limits

​Model-Specific Limits

Checking Your Current Limits

Free Tier Limits

DDoS Protection

Negative Balance

Per-Key Spending Limits

Model-Specific Limits