Rate Limits

We enforce rate limits on both REST API and WebSocket usage. These limits apply to both IP address and L1 address. If you send transactions via Websocket, the sendTx and sendTxBatch channels will share the same rate limits that the REST API uses.

REST API Endpoint Limits

The following limits apply to the https://mainnet.zklighter.elliot.ai/api/v1/ base URL, different limits (listed further below) apply to https://explorer.elliot.ai/api/.

Premium accounts	Standard accounts
24,000 weighted requests per rolling minute	60 requests per rolling minute

ThesendTx and sendTxBatch transaction types are the only two endpoints constrained by Volume Quota ), necessary to create and modify orders.

Weights:

Endpoint	Weight
`sendTx, sendTxBatch, nextNonce`	6
`publicPools, txFromL1TxHash`	50
`accountInactiveOrders, deposit/latest`	100
`apikeys`	150
`transferFeeInfo`	500
`trades, recentTrades`	600
`changeAccountTier, tokens/, setAccountMetadata, notification/ack, createIntentAddress, fastwithdraw, referral/`	3000
Other endpoints	300

While standard accounts rate limits are not weighted, whenever {premium_weighted_requests}/{endpoint_weight} < {standard_requests}, the former limit is going to be applied. For example, both standard and premium accounts will be able to make a maximum of 8 requests per rolling minute to the changeAccountTier endpoint.

Explorer REST API Endpoint Limits

The following limits apply to the https://explorer.elliot.ai/api/ Base URL.

Standard Users and Premium Users both have the same limit of 90 weighted requests per rolling minute window.

Weights

Endpoint	Weight
`search`	3
`accounts/*`	2
Other endpoints	1

WebSocket Limits

To prevent resource exhaustion, we enforce the following usage limits per IP:

Connections: 100
Subscriptions per connection: 100
Total Subscriptions: 1000
Max Connections Per Minute: 80 (not to be confused with channel subscriptions)
Max Messages Sent By Client Per Minute: 200 (sendTx and sendBatchTx are not counted here, and follow the same limits as REST requests)
Max Inflight Messages: 50
Unique Accounts: 10

Additionally, every connection is automatically dropped after 24 hours. It's recommended to have proper reconnection logic, in addition to ping/pong logic.

Transaction Type Limits (per user)

The following limits only apply to Standard Accounts:

Transaction Type	Limit
Default	40 requests / minute
`L2Withdraw`	2 requests / minute
`L2UpdateLeverage`	1 request / minute
`L2CreateSubAccount`	2 requests / minute
`L2CreatePublicPool`	2 requests / minute
`L2ChangePubKey`	2 requests / 10 seconds
`L2Transfer`	1 request / minute

Rate Limit Exceeding Behavior

If you exceed any rate limit:

You will receive an HTTP 429 Too Many Requests error
For WebSocket connections, excessive messages may result in disconnection
When you're rate-limited on REST, WebSocket connections also get rate-limited, and viceversa

To avoid this, please ensure your clients are implementing proper backoff and retry strategies.

Cooldown

Depending on whether you have been rate-limited by our firewall, or by the api servers, the cooldown period varies:

Firewall: 60 seconds, static
Api servers: weightOfEndpoint/(totalWeight/60)

As an example, making a request to the account endpoint (which carries a weight of 300) after having exhausted your weighted requests in a given minute window, results in a 750ms cooldown period.