Toronto SEO
All HTTP status codes
4xx Client Error
RFC 6585

429 Too Many Requests

The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time (rate limiting).

What it means

HTTP 429 Too Many Requests indicates the client has been rate-limited. The response should include a Retry-After header indicating how long to wait before making another request.

When it's used

API rate limiting, abuse prevention, brute-force defense, fair-use enforcement.

Common causes
  • Exceeded API request quota
  • Brute-force login attempts detected
  • Crawler hitting too aggressively
  • Burst traffic from a single IP
How to fix it
  • Honor the Retry-After header before retrying
  • Implement exponential backoff in your client
  • Cache responses to reduce request volume
  • Upgrade to a higher API tier
  • Distribute requests across multiple IPs/keys
Example response
HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Retry-After: 60
Content-Type: application/json
SEO impact

Critical — repeated 429s to Googlebot will reduce crawl rate. Whitelist Googlebot in rate limiters.