RateLimit-Remaining

The HTTP RateLimit-Remaining unofficial response header is a widely deployed header indicating how many requests a client has left within the current rate limit window.

Table of Contents

Usage
Values
- remaining
Example
Takeaway
See also

Usage

RateLimit-Remaining is one of three separate rate limit HTTP headers introduced in earlier IETF drafts. While RateLimit-Limit reports the total quota, RateLimit-Remaining reports how much of the quota is still available. Combined with RateLimit-Reset, clients have everything needed to pace their requests and avoid hitting the limit.

The value is a non-negative integer. The count decreases with each request and resets when the rate limit window expires. A value of 0 means the quota is exhausted and further requests are likely to receive a 429 response until the window resets.

This header replaces the older, non-standard X-RateLimit-Remaining header.

Note

The current IETF draft (draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers) consolidates these three separate headers into a single RateLimit header paired with RateLimit-Policy. The separate RateLimit-Limit, RateLimit-Remaining, and RateLimit-Reset names remain widely deployed but are not the direction the draft is heading.

Values

remaining

A non-negative integer representing the number of requests still available in the current window. The value starts at or near the RateLimit-Limit quota and decreases toward zero as requests are made.

Example

A response from GitLab showing 499 requests remaining out of a 500-request quota. The client has consumed only one request in this window.

RateLimit-Limit: 500
RateLimit-Remaining: 499
RateLimit-Reset: 60

A response indicating the client has exhausted the quota. No requests remain, and the window resets in 60 seconds. Subsequent requests before the reset are likely to return a 429 status with a Retry-After header.

RateLimit-Limit: 10
RateLimit-Remaining: 0
RateLimit-Reset: 60

An API response showing 119 requests remaining in a 120-request quota. OKX returns this pattern across its web endpoints.

RateLimit-Limit: 120
RateLimit-Remaining: 119
RateLimit-Reset: 15

Takeaway

The RateLimit-Remaining header reports the number of requests still available before the rate limit is reached, letting clients decide when to slow down or wait for the window to reset.