Dynamic rate limiting?

[evangunter]

Related Product
Which product is this question related to?
API

Describe the question
Does the API chance rate limits dynamically? Suddenly, I'm getting an error message that limits my request to 10 per 20 seconds opposed to the normal 100.

What have you tried that worked?
On initial API use, the rate limit seems standard, but at some point, I get a lower limit and my app breaks.

What have you tried that didn't work?
I'm trying to figure out if something has changed (as the app has been running fine for years) and I need to re-work the rate limit functionality.

Additional context
Here's sample error logs with the error output:

[2026-03-23 10:12:32.801] [error] {"message":"API call is in error","data":{"code":429,"url":"https://api.planningcenteronline.com/people/v2/people?per_page=100&offset=32700&include=emails%2Cphone_numbers%2Cprimary_campus%2Cname_prefix%2Cname_suffix","response":{"errors":[{"code":"429","title":"Too Many Requests","detail":"Rate limit exceeded: 23 of 10 requests per 20 seconds"}]}}}
[2026-03-23 10:12:33.056] [error] {"message":"API call is in error","data":{"code":429,"url":"https://api.planningcenteronline.com/people/v2/people?per_page=100&offset=32800&include=emails%2Cphone_numbers%2Cprimary_campus%2Cname_prefix%2Cname_suffix","response":{"errors":[{"code":"429","title":"Too Many Requests","detail":"Rate limit exceeded: 24 of 10 requests per 20 seconds"}]}}}
[2026-03-23 10:12:33.300] [error] {"message":"API call is in error","data":{"code":429,"url":"https://api.planningcenteronline.com/people/v2/people?per_page=100&offset=32900&include=emails%2Cphone_numbers%2Cprimary_campus%2Cname_prefix%2Cname_suffix","response":{"errors":[{"code":"429","title":"Too Many Requests","detail":"Rate limit exceeded: 25 of 10 requests per 20 seconds"}]}}}
[2026-03-23 10:12:33.557] [error] {"message":"API call is in error","data":{"code":429,"url":"https://api.planningcenteronline.com/people/v2/people?per_page=100&offset=33000&include=emails%2Cphone_numbers%2Cprimary_campus%2Cname_prefix%2Cname_suffix","response":{"errors":[{"code":"429","title":"Too Many Requests","detail":"Rate limit exceeded: 26 of 10 requests per 20 seconds"}]}}}
[2026-03-23 10:12:33.813] [error] {"message":"API call is in error","data":{"code":429,"url":"https://api.planningcenteronline.com/people/v2/people?per_page=100&offset=33100&include=emails%2Cphone_numbers%2Cprimary_campus%2Cname_prefix%2Cname_suffix","response":{"errors":[{"code":"429","title":"Too Many Requests","detail":"Rate limit exceeded: 27 of 10 requests per 20 seconds"}]}}}
[2026-03-23 10:12:34.063] [error] {"message":"API call is in error","data":{"code":429,"url":"https://api.planningcenteronline.com/people/v2/people?per_page=100&offset=33200&include=emails%2Cphone_numbers%2Cprimary_campus%2Cname_prefix%2Cname_suffix","response":{"errors":[{"code":"429","title":"Too Many Requests","detail":"Rate limit exceeded: 28 of 10 requests per 20 seconds"}]}}}

I have..

• Reviewed the documentation found at https://developer.planning.center/docs
• Searched for previous issues answering this question
• Removed all private information from this issue (credentials, tokens, emails, phone numbers, etc.)
• Reviewed my issue for completeness

[github-actions]

Potentially Related Issues

I found some existing issues that may be related to this one. Please check if any of them address your question before waiting for a response:

🟣 #1420 — Rate Limit Headers Changed to Lowercase Unexpectedly (Closed)

Summary: This issue reported that rate-limit headers unexpectedly changed from mixed-case to lowercase, breaking apps that parsed headers with case-sensitivity. While not about dynamic rate limits, it demonstrates that API infrastructure changes can affect rate limiting behavior and error handling.

Key discussion points:

• Rate-limiting headers changed to lowercase due to HTTP/2 compliance requirements
• Per HTTP specification, header field names should be treated as case-insensitive regardless of formatting
• The change was unexpected and temporarily broke the user's application until they adjusted their code to handle headers case-insensitively

Resolution: This was an intentional change for HTTP/2 compliance. Planning Center acknowledged the disruption and committed to updating documentation to reflect the lowercase header format. The user resolved the issue by updating their code to process headers in a case-insensitive manner.

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[glosie]

Hi @evangunter,

Yes, rate limits can be dynamic and might vary based on the endpoint or request details. Our recommendation is to rely on the rate-limit headers in the response, which will let your application automatically handle any limit changes (up or down).

https://api.planningcenteronline.com/docs/overview/rate-limiting

[evangunter]

Hey @glosie ,

Thanks for the response. Is this expected behavior? For context, our app pulls down people records to match donations within the app. This database is quite large, but we get this error right around 29K people downloaded out of 52K every time. Have been building things on top of the API for a while and just wanted to make sure there wasn't something different going on besides "after X requests, we throttle you".

Does that make sense?

[aberamseyer]

yeah, I noticed this too in our integrations. It seems they silently switch from about 100req/20sec to 10req/20sec after about 30 consecutive requests to the same endpoint. We were getting new 429's despite trying to watch for the specified headers and had to make our header inspection more thorough.