[Now Live]: New and Improved HubSpot API Limits

[#1]

Edit: This is now live. 

We’re excited to share that in the coming weeks, HubSpot will be making some significant changes to our API Limits for all developers, customers, and users of HubSpot.

We understand that improving the capacity of our daily and per second API limits have been a top request for some time and we want you to know that we are listening and have been hard at work to better meet your development needs. These improvements will impact developers using OAuth and API Key (or HAPIkey) resources.

Here’s what’s changing for developers using OAuth

Today, any API calls made using OAuth are not subject to the per day call limit. However, they are subject to the 10 calls per second (or secondly limit). When the changes take effect, integrations using OAuth will have a new per second API burst limit of 100 calls per 10 seconds per app per portal, allowing your applications to have more flexibility when they need it the most.

Here’s what’s changing for developers using HubSpot API Keys

Both the daily and per second burst limits will be automatically updated to the following structure when the changes roll out. Please keep in mind that these limits apply to all HubSpot Product Hubs (Marketing, Sales and Service):

	Product Tier	Old Limits	New Limits
API Key Standard Limits	Free & Starter	Burst: 10/second Daily: 40,000	Burst: 100/10 seconds Daily: 250,000
	Professional & Enterprise	Burst: 10/second Daily: 40,000	Burst: 100/10 seconds Daily: 500,000
API Key Limits with API Add-On	Any tier	Burst: 10/second Daily: 160,000	Burst: 120/10 seconds Daily: 1,000,000

Here’s what you need to do

These changes will go into effect automatically, so there’s nothing that you need to take action on your end. For full details on all of these changes, please refer to this product blog post.

We hope these changes will better serve your business by allowing more flexible ways to bring your data into HubSpot. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to start a discussion below.

[#2]

@zwolfson Thanks for sharing the new api limits.

In fact, I just spent a few hours struggling with the new 100/10 sec burst api limits yesterday.  I guess the burst ability is nice, but sadly, it still works out to 10 api requests per second.

10 requests per second is pretty lean. (  @bhalligan )

Salesforce implements a simpler rate limit: 25 concurrent requests (calls) with a duration of 20 seconds or longer. (edit) There is effectively no limit on the number of requests per second...

We are doing LOTS of stuff with the API now:

1. Setting default values on deals, contacts, companies. (No workflows are not a solution to setting default property values.)

2. CRM Extensions that hit our esb, which in turn hit the hubspot api to return data that is otherwise buried in the view all properties interface.

3. Creating notes engagements on deals when forms are submitted that summarize the form submission.

4. Creating engagements when other events external to the system occur.

5. Display hubspot information in our on-premise system via our esb hitting the hubspot api.

6. Syncronizing contacts, companies, and deals between our on-premise systems.

Majority of the api calls we make are lightweight....meaning they are not long running or resource intensive.

Here's some math:

100 api calls per 10 seconds. 

86,400 seconds in 24 hours.

86,400 secs / 10 seconds = 8,640 api windows of 100 calls

8,640 * 100 = 860,400 api calls.

That's assuming we basically make 10 calls a second every second.

We won't use that much...

We will probably only use around 300k api calls a day once our entire org is live.

The problem is that the far majority of those api calls will be compressed into business hours. For business hours let's use 7 hours, since activity during lunch time slows considerably.

7 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds = 25,200 seconds / 10 seconds = 2,520 api windows of 100 calls

2,520 * 100 = 252,000 api calls available during business hours. 

This is theoretically 50k api calls short of what we need during business hours.

That's the problem with the 10 secondly rate limits, we are short on api calls during business hours.

I would feel much more comfortable with 200 apis calls every 10 seconds.

Regards,

Chad

[#3]

Hi Chad,

We really appreciate the thoughtful and detailed response.  When we started to scope out this latest update to our API limits we thought a lot about how to best strike a balance between allowing for as many use cases as possible and protecting our infrastructure. This is by no means the end to our updates, but a starting point for us. As our customers adjust to these new limits we will continue to assess a couple of things:

• Do these new limits help to alleviate development pain?
• Do our new limits help to protect our infrastructure (from accidental misuse or intentional abuse)?
• Are there different ways to think about limits outside of what we have currently have in place? If so, what would better serve HubSpot developers?
• Are there new use cases and needs from our customers that we need to take into account now?

Thinking more specifically about our burst limits going forward -- we are already working with our engineering teams responsible for our overall developer experience and infrastructure to think about the next iteration of our limits.  We don’t have a timeline on exactly when that will be, but the more feedback like this we get, the easier it becomes for us to prioritize where we focus next.

Feedback like this really helps us shape the future of our development resources (not just limits) so we very much appreciate it. Keep it coming and we’ll keep working

[#4]

This says the update will go into effect "automatically." Does that mean that as of now, this update is in effect, or is there a set date for when this will be rolled out? 

[#5]

That is correct. The new limits are now live and have been rolled-out for all.