# Rate limits

> Curriculo API rate limits: 600 requests per minute per key, 2,000 per IP, shared capacity for heavy work, a 300-second request timeout and typical latencies.

**Source:** /docs/rate-limits/ (Curriculo Docs)  
**Updated:** 12 October 2026  
**Contact:** hello@curriculo.me

Request limits are enforced per key, so one noisy integration cannot spend another's budget.

| Limit | Value | What it protects |
|---|---|---|
| Per API key | 600 requests per minute | Fairness between customers. Exceeding it returns `429`. |
| Per IP address | 2,000 requests per minute | An abuse floor applied before authentication, generous enough for a shared corporate NAT. |
| Heavy operations | 3 at a time, shared across the service | Parsing, evaluation, summary, transcription, language detection and prompting run three at a time on capacity shared by all accounts. Beyond that, up to 12 requests wait their turn for at most 10 seconds; past that they get `503` with `Retry-After: 30`. |
| Request timeout | 300 seconds | The ceiling for any single call. Work that exceeds it returns `504`. |

## Typical latencies

Measured on production:

| Operation | Typical latency |
|---|---|
| Language detection | Under a second |
| Translation | Under a second |
| Interview summary (transcript) | 15 to 20 seconds |
| CV parsing | 40 to 90 seconds per document |
| Evaluation | 30 to 60 seconds |

> [!WARNING]
> Set your client timeout accordingly. A 30-second HTTP timeout will abandon calls that would have succeeded. Keep a request timeout above five minutes for the document operations.

## Throughput

Because heavy work runs on shared capacity, throughput varies with load across the service. As an estimate, sustained throughput is roughly 2 to 4 CVs per minute. A queued request waits at most 10 seconds for a slot and then has 300 seconds to finish, so a long queue shows up as `503` and slow work as `504`.

For backlogs and long recordings, use the [async lane](/docs/background-processing/), which does not hold your connection open. If you need materially more throughput, or expect thousands of documents in a batch, tell us the shape of the workload and we will confirm the plan before you build.

## Handling 429 and 503

Retry `429` and `503` with backoff. On `429`, honour the `Retry-After` header when present. See [Errors](/docs/errors/).