API rate-limit handling should control outbound demand, respect the provider's contract and keep pending business work visible. A retry loop alone can increase overload and delay urgent tasks. Define which work may wait, when it expires and who acts when the integration cannot meet its deadline.
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Understand the actual limit
Record whether the provider limits requests by account, credential, endpoint, tenant or another unit. Identify the time window, concurrency rules and documented response signals. Check current production terms rather than assuming sandbox limits apply.
Separate quota exhaustion from temporary throttling and unrelated failures. They may require different recovery or commercial decisions.
Use a demand and recovery matrix
| Condition | Integration response | Operating question |
|---|---|---|
| Short burst exceeds allowance | Queue or defer under an agreed policy | Can this task wait? |
| Provider indicates retry timing | Follow supported guidance with bounded attempts | What is the latest useful completion time? |
| Sustained backlog grows | Alert on age and business impact | Who changes capacity or priority? |
| One tenant dominates demand | Apply the approved fairness model | Which commitments must be preserved? |
| Request expires | Stop or route for review | What should users see? |
| Outcome uncertain after timeout | Reconcile before repeating side effects | Is the action safe to retry? |
Prioritisation must follow the product's approved commitments. Do not silently starve one customer to make an aggregate success metric look healthy.
Control pressure at the boundary
Microsoft's throttling pattern guidance discusses resource limits and related strategies such as queueing and outbound controls. Select the mechanism for the actual dependency and task rather than copying an unexplained retry count.
For a hypothetical order sync, a background status refresh may wait while a time-sensitive confirmed transaction needs a different route. Define those classes and the maximum useful delay.
Test backlog recovery
Simulate throttling in an authorised environment. Verify queue visibility, bounded retries and recovery without a new traffic spike. Confirm that already completed side effects are not repeated.
Show users whether work is queued, failed or expired. A spinner that disappears does not explain whether an order reached the destination. Give support a reference connecting the business record and integration attempts.
Rate-limit questions
Should we immediately retry every rate-limit response?
No. Follow the provider's documented contract and the integration's bounded backoff and expiry rules.
Can higher infrastructure capacity remove an external limit?
Not by itself. The provider's allowance remains a separate constraint.
Pair this plan with integration monitoring, and discuss workload deadlines with Drema's API team.
This article explains what to build, not legal advice. Rules change; confirm against the current official text before relying on it.
