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What is the NetLicensing API Rate Limit and what happens when I exceed it?

Question

My plan says “1 request / minute”. Does that mean my application can validate a license only once a minute?

Answer

No. The API Rate Limit is a guaranteed minimum, not a maximum. It is the throughput NetLicensing always serves for your vendor account, even when the system is under heavy load. When the system is not busy, requests above that rate are served as usual.

What the limit means

You send… System not busy System busy
At or below your plan’s rate Served Served (guaranteed)
Above your plan’s rate Served May be rejected with 429

The limit only matters when NetLicensing is busy. At those times, your plan’s rate is what you can count on.

Limits per plan

Plan Guaranteed throughput
Community 1 request / minute
Basic 1 request / minute
Premium 1 request / second
Select Customizable

The limit applies per vendor account. All your products, API keys and client applications share it.

The API Rate Limit is not the same as the number of products, licensees or licenses your plan allows. Those are separate plan limits. The rate limit only controls how fast requests are served when the system is busy.

Which requests count

Every request to the NetLicensing REST API counts, whatever the endpoint: license validation, creating and updating licensees and licenses, tokens, and so on. It makes no difference whether the request comes from your own code, one of the client libraries, the MCP server or a NetLicensing Agent in proxy mode.

What happens above the limit

If you are above your plan’s rate while the system is busy, NetLicensing rejects the request with HTTP 429 Too Many Requests. The Retry-After header gives the number of seconds to wait before you try again (see API Conventions).

Your application should:

  1. Treat 429 as “try again later”, not as an invalid license.
  2. Wait for the number of seconds in Retry-After, then retry.
  3. Meanwhile, keep using the last successful validation result while its ttl is valid, as you would during a network outage.

Never lock the user out because of a 429. It says nothing about the license.

What 1 request per minute means in practice

One validation is one request. A single call to POST /licensee/{licenseeNumber}/validate returns the result for every product module of the licensee, so you never need one call per module.

At the guaranteed rate, 1 request per minute is 60 validations per hour, or 1,440 per day. That covers applications that validate at start-up, when a licensed feature is opened, or a few times a day. If you have many active users who validate often, plan for a higher limit.

How to send fewer requests

  • Validate when it matters, not on every action. Validate at start-up, when a session begins or when the user opens a licensed feature. See How often should my application validate the license?
  • Reuse the result until its TTL. Every validation response contains a ttl. Cache the response and don’t call the API again until it expires. You set the TTL in the Management Console settings. See Offline validation using TTL.
  • Validate once for all modules. One validate call covers every product module of the licensee.
  • Put a NetLicensing Agent in front of many clients. In proxy mode (run-agent), the Agent caches validation results (locally or in Redis), so clients on the same network don’t each call the cloud. See Validation Cache in Proxy Mode.
  • Don’t poll for changes. Use webhook notifications to find out about purchases and license changes instead of calling the API repeatedly.

Getting a higher limit

Upgrade to Premium for a guaranteed 1 request per second. If you need more, the Select plan’s limit is set to match your load: contact us.

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