Rate limits & quota

Two complementary limits protect the service:

Quota — total screenshots per month (resets each cycle)
Rate limit — requests per minute (sliding 60s window)

Quota (per cycle)

Plan	Quota / month	Per-extra rate
Free	100	(no overage — hard cap)
Basic ($17)	2,400	(hard cap on launch)
Growth ($79)	12,000	(hard cap on launch)
Scale ($259)	60,000	(hard cap on launch)

Hitting the quota returns 402 quota_exceeded with details:

{
  "error":          "quota_exceeded",
  "message":        "Monthly quota exhausted. Upgrade your plan or wait for the next cycle.",
  "plan_code":      "basic",
  "plan_quota":     2400,
  "plan_used":      2400,
  "plan_remaining": 0,
  "credits_needed": 1,
  "resets_at":      "2026-06-01T00:00:00+00:00",
  "upgrade_url":    "https://websitescreenshotapi.net/pricing"
}

Get current state:

curl https://websitescreenshotapi.net/api/v1/credits \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

Rate limit (per minute)

Plan	RPM
Free	10
Basic	50
Growth	100
Scale	180

Hitting the RPM returns 429 rate_limited:

HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Retry-After: 23
X-RateLimit-Limit: 50
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 0
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1762339200

{
  "error":   "rate_limited",
  "message": "Too many requests. Plan limit: 50/min."
}

Always honor Retry-After and back off accordingly.

Per-feature unit cost

Feature	Units
PNG / JPG / WebP	1
PDF	2
`+ full_page`	+1
MP4 / WebM video	1 / sec, min 2
GIF animation	2 / sec, min 3
`+ stealth` (V1.3+)	+3
`+ premium_proxy` (V1.3+)	+5

Bulk endpoint quota

Bulk debits are upfront: the total cost is reserved at submission. If you submit 100 PNG full_page → 200 units charged immediately. If a render fails, those units are not refunded (we still spent the resource).

Headers on every request

Every authenticated response carries:

X-RateLimit-Limit: 50
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 47
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1762339200

Use these to throttle client-side and avoid hitting 429.

Upgrade

Self-serve : /pricing — instant Stripe checkout
Custom (>60k/mo, dedicated IPs, on-prem) : contact us

FAQ

Q : My quota counts each call or each render? Each unit consumed. A bulk of 100 URLs = 100 units (or more with full_page).

Q : Failed renders consume units? Yes for now. We may refund failed renders due to our infra in the future, but target_* errors (DNS, blocked, SSL) consume units because we still attempted the render.

Q : Cached signed URLs consume units? No — X-Cache: HIT on /v1/render is free.

Q : Demo endpoint has its own limit? Yes — POST /v1/demo is throttled to 3 / IP / 24h, no auth required.