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Rate limits

Each developer key has its own rate limit, measured in requests per minute. New keys are created with a limit of 60 requests per minute. Your plan also caps the rate of each key, and the lower of the two applies: MCP OAuth connections, which do not use a key, are limited to 60 requests per minute. Exceeding a rate limit returns 429 Too Many Requests. Rate-limited requests are not charged.
Rate limits are per key. If you run separate workloads, create a separate key for each, so one busy integration cannot starve another and you can revoke or measure them independently. The number of keys you can create depends on your plan; see Credits & Pricing.

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Handling 429

Check the response body to identify the cause:
  • detail: "Rate limit exceeded" means the key exceeded its request rate. Retry with exponential backoff and spread out bursts of calls. This response does not include Retry-After.
  • detail.error_code: "PLAN_LIMIT_REACHED" means the account does not have enough credits for the call. detail.balance is what is left and detail.required is the call’s price. Wait for detail.resets_at or upgrade the plan. Retry-After gives the seconds until credits refresh when that time is known; immediate retries fail the same way.
See Errors & Status for both response bodies and the other credit errors.

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Metering

Every tool call is recorded per key. For each key, Nikiwa tracks:
  • Current-period units, the usage in the current calendar month (YYYYMM, UTC).
  • Total calls and total units, durable lifetime counters.
  • Per-tool breakdown, calls and units grouped by tool name.
A call’s units are the tool’s price in credits. Metering is a usage report, not your credit balance: it also counts calls whose credits were refunded, and its month does not follow your plan’s refill date. Your balance is shown in the app; see Credits. You can view all of this per key in the app. See Usage & metering.
The Tools API and the MCP server are metered and rate-limited independently, each on its own per-key window. Both draw on the same credit balance.