Increasing app rate limiting

API Question
#1

Hello,

I’m working on an application where I have managed to reach the limit of requests.

Currently the app is in development and so the calls to the API are happening more frequently than they would usually.

I would most certainly think the 600 would need to be increased to something like 1200, or possibly even 2400, but would most likely take a nose dive after the development work is completed down to maybe 800-1000 (possibly less than 600).

Can you please increase my limit? Or could you kindly point me in the right direction to get some assistance with this?

Thanks,
Dean

#2

You need to handle rate limits so that if you get ‘excessive use’ responses, your system backs off.
If you are doing more than 2 per second, you have to ask the question ‘why’, and look at the service you are offering and the way you are using our resources.
The API is not for bulk loading or bulk checking company data, we have bulk products for that.
The API is not for keeping company information up to date every day, we have a streaming API for that.
Here is a reminder of our Fair Usage Policy…
Acceptable use of Companies House Searchable Databases
The Companies House searchable databases are designed to meet the needs of a wide range of users wishing to interrogate our information on-line.
Due to limitations of equipment and bandwidth, they are not intended to be a source for bulk downloads.
Individuals, companies, IP addresses or blocks of IP addresses who deny or degrade service to other users by generating unusually high numbers of daily database accesses, whether generated manually or in an automated fashion, may be denied access to these services without notice.

#3

Hi Mark,

The application has a hard rate limit which blocks the next request for 2 seconds. Although this was introduced a little later in the application’s development

Thank you for making me aware of the bulk services as this may be a better service for us to use, please can you point me in the correct direction for any documentation relating to this?

Many thanks for your quick response.

Kind regards,
Dean

#4

I will get someone to contact you regarding bulk products.

#5

To give a bit more context @MArkWilliams we only need specific data for certain types of companies, not necessarily a fully exhaustive dataset of all companies.

We only really need to find a company when this action is initiated by a user, by linking the information and storing it locally.

Going forwards from the initial import, we would then look to leverage the streaming service to continually update the companies, although I would most certainly like to see more details about this particular API and how I can only update companies which I hold data for.

In any case, thank you for your help with this :slight_smile: