Rate limits and query limits for the GraphQL API

Primary rate limit

The GraphQL API assigns points to each query and limits the points that you can use within a specific amount of time. This limit helps prevent abuse and denial-of-service attacks, and ensures that the API remains available for all users.

The REST API also has a separate primary rate limit. For more information, see Limites de débit pour l'API REST.

In general, you can calculate your primary rate limit for the GraphQL API based on your method of authentication:

For users: 5,000 points per hour per user. This includes requests made with a personal access token as well as requests made by a GitHub App or OAuth app on behalf of a user that authorized the app. Requests made on a user's behalf by a GitHub App that is owned by a GitHub Enterprise Cloud organization have a higher rate limit of 10,000 points per hour. Similarly, requests made on your behalf by an OAuth app that is owned or approved by a GitHub Enterprise Cloud organization have a higher rate limit of 10,000 points per hour if you are a member of the GitHub Enterprise Cloud organization.
For GitHub App installations not on a GitHub Enterprise Cloud organization: 5,000 points per hour per installation. Installations that have more than 20 repositories receive another 50 points per hour for each repository. Installations that are on an organization that have more than 20 users receive another 50 points per hour for each user. The rate limit cannot increase beyond 12,500 points per hour. The rate limit for user access tokens (as opposed to installation access tokens) are dictated by the primary rate limit for users.
For GitHub App installations on a GitHub Enterprise Cloud organization: 10,000 points per hour per installation. The rate limit for user access tokens (as opposed to installation access tokens) are dictated by the primary rate limit for users.
For OAuth apps: 5,000 points per hour, or 10,000 points per hour if the app is owned by a GitHub Enterprise Cloud organization. This only applies when the app uses their client ID and client secret to request public data. The rate limit for OAuth access tokens generated by a OAuth app are dictated by the primary rate limit for users.
For GITHUB_TOKEN in GitHub Actions workflows: 1,000 points per hour per repository. For requests to resources that belong to an enterprise account on GitHub.com, the limit is 15,000 points per hour per repository.

You can check the point value of a query or calculate the expected point value as described in the following sections. The formula for calculating points and the rate limit are subject to change.

Checking the status of your primary rate limit

You can use the headers that are sent with each response to determine the current status of your primary rate limit.

Header name	Description
`x-ratelimit-limit`	The maximum number of points that you can use per hour
`x-ratelimit-remaining`	The number of points remaining in the current rate limit window
`x-ratelimit-used`	The number of points you have used in the current rate limit window
`x-ratelimit-reset`	The time at which the current rate limit window resets, in UTC epoch seconds
`x-ratelimit-resource`	The rate limit resource that the request counted against. For GraphQL requests, this will always be `graphql`.

You can also query the rateLimit object to check your rate limit. When possible, you should use the rate limit response headers instead of querying the API to check your rate limit.

query {
  viewer {
    login
  }
  rateLimit {
    limit
    remaining
    used
    resetAt
  }
}

Field	Description
`limit`	The maximum number of points that you can use per hour
`remaining`	The number of points remaining in the current rate limit window
`used`	The number of points you have used in the current rate limit window
`resetAt`	The time at which the current rate limit window resets, in UTC epoch seconds

Returning the point value of a query

You can return the point value of a query by querying the cost field on the rateLimit object:

query {
  viewer {
    login
  }
  rateLimit {
    cost
  }
}

Predicting the point value of a query

You can also roughly calculate the point value of a query before you make the query.

Add up the number of requests needed to fulfill each unique connection in the call. Assume every request will reach the first or last argument limits.
Divide the number by 100 and round the result to the nearest whole number to get the final aggregate point value. This step normalizes large numbers.

Remarque

The minimum point value of a call to the GraphQL API is 1.

Here's an example query and score calculation:

query {
  viewer {
    login
    repositories(first: 100) {
      edges {
        node {
          id

          issues(first: 50) {
            edges {
              node {
                id

                labels(first: 60) {
                  edges {
                    node {
                      id
                      name
                    }
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

This query requires 5,101 requests to fulfill:

Although we're returning 100 repositories, the API has to connect to the viewer's account once to get the list of repositories. So, requests for repositories = 1
Although we're returning 50 issues, the API has to connect to each of the 100 repositories to get the list of issues. So, requests for issues = 100
Although we're returning 60 labels, the API has to connect to each of the 5,000 potential total issues to get the list of labels. So, requests for labels = 5,000
Total = 5,101

Dividing by 100 and rounding gives us the final score of the query: 51

Secondary rate limits

Outre les limitations de débit primaires, GitHub applique les limitations de débit secondaires pour éviter les abus et de conserver l’API disponible pour tous les utilisateurs.

Vous pouvez rencontrer une limitation de débit secondaire si vous :

Effectuez trop de demandes simultanées. Plus de 100 requêtes simultanées ne sont autorisées. Cette limite est partagée entre l’API REST et l’API GraphQL.
Effectuez trop de demandes à un point de terminaison unique par minute. Plus de 900 points par minute sont autorisés pour les points de terminaison d’API REST, et pas plus de 2 000 points par minute sont autorisés pour le point de terminaison de l’API GraphQL. Pour plus d’informations sur les points, consultez Calcul des points pour la limitation de débit secondaire.
Effectuez trop de demandes par minute. Plus de 90 secondes de temps processeur par 60 secondes de temps réel sont autorisées. Plus de 60 secondes de ce temps processeur peuvent être pour l’API GraphQL. Vous pouvez estimer approximativement le temps processeur en mesurant le temps de réponse total pour vos demandes d’API.
Effectuez trop de requêtes qui consomment un nombre excessif de ressources de calcul pendant une courte période.
Créez trop de contenu sur GitHub dans un court laps de temps. En général, pas plus de 80 demandes de génération de contenu par minute et pas plus de 500 demandes de génération de contenu par heure ne sont autorisées. Certains points de terminaison contiennent des limites de création de contenu inférieures. Les limites de création de contenu incluent les actions effectuées sur l’interface web GitHub ainsi que via l’API REST et l’API GraphQL.

Ces limitations de débit secondaires sont susceptibles de changer sans préavis. Vous pouvez également rencontrer une limitation de débit secondaire pour des raisons non déclarées.

Calcul de points pour la limitation de débit secondaire

Certaines limitations de débit secondaires sont déterminées par les valeurs de points des demandes. Pour les demandes GraphQL, ces valeurs de point sont distinctes des calculs de valeurs de point pour la limitation de débit primaire.

Requête	Points
Demandes GraphQL sans mutations	1
Demandes GraphQL avec mutations	5
La plupart des demandes `GET`, `HEAD` et `OPTIONS` de l’API REST	1
La plupart des demandes `POST`, `PATCH`, `PUT`, ou `DELETE` de l’API REST	5

Certains points de terminaison d’API REST comportent un coût de point différent qui n’est pas partagé publiquement.

Exceeding the rate limit

If you exceed your primary rate limit, the response status will still be 200, but you will receive an error message, and the value of the x-ratelimit-remaining header will be 0. You should not retry your request until after the time specified by the x-ratelimit-reset header.

If you exceed a secondary rate limit, the response status will be 200 or 403, and you will receive an error message that indicates that you hit a secondary rate limit. If the retry-after response header is present, you should not retry your request until after that many seconds has elapsed. If the x-ratelimit-remaining header is 0, you should not retry your request until after the time, in UTC epoch seconds, specified by the x-ratelimit-reset header. Otherwise, wait for at least one minute before retrying. If your request continues to fail due to a secondary rate limit, wait for an exponentially increasing amount of time between retries, and throw an error after a specific number of retries.

Continuing to make requests while you are rate limited may result in the banning of your integration.

Staying under the rate limit

To avoid exceeding a rate limit, you should pause at least 1 second between mutative requests and avoid concurrent requests.

You should also subscribe to webhook events instead of polling the API for data. For more information, see Documentation sur les webhooks.

You can also stream the audit log in order to view API requests. This can help you troubleshoot integrations that are exceeding the rate limit. For more information, see Streaming de journaux d’audit pour votre entreprise.

Node limit

To pass schema validation, all GraphQL API calls must meet these standards:

Clients must supply a first or last argument on any connection.
Values of first and last must be within 1-100.
Individual calls cannot request more than 500,000 total nodes.

Calculating nodes in a call

These two examples show how to calculate the total nodes in a call.

Simple query:

query {
  viewer {
    repositories(first: 50) {
      edges {
        repository:node {
          name

          issues(first: 10) {
            totalCount
            edges {
              node {
                title
                bodyHTML
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Calculation:

50         = 50 repositories
 +
50 x 10  = 500 repository issues

            = 550 total nodes

Complex query:

query {
  viewer {
    repositories(first: 50) {
      edges {
        repository:node {
          name

          pullRequests(first: 20) {
            edges {
              pullRequest:node {
                title

                comments(first: 10) {
                  edges {
                    comment:node {
                      bodyHTML
                    }
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          }

          issues(first: 20) {
            totalCount
            edges {
              issue:node {
                title
                bodyHTML

                comments(first: 10) {
                  edges {
                    comment:node {
                      bodyHTML
                    }
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }

    followers(first: 10) {
      edges {
        follower:node {
          login
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Calculation:

50              = 50 repositories
 +
50 x 20       = 1,000 pullRequests
 +
50 x 20 x 10 = 10,000 pullRequest comments
 +
50 x 20       = 1,000 issues
 +
50 x 20 x 10 = 10,000 issue comments
 +
10              = 10 followers

                 = 22,060 total nodes

Timeouts

If GitHub takes more than 10 seconds to process an API request, GitHub will terminate the request and you will receive a timeout response and a message reporting that "We couldn't respond to your request in time".

GitHub reserves the right to change the timeout window to protect the speed and reliability of the API.

You can check the status of the GraphQL API at githubstatus.com to determine whether the timeout is due to a problem with the API. You can also try to simplify your request or try your request later. For example, if you are requesting a large number of objects in a single request, you can try requesting fewer objects split over multiple queries.

If a timeout occurs for any of your API requests, additional points will be deducted from your primary rate limit for the next hour to protect the speed and reliability of the API.

Other resource limits

To protect the speed and reliability of the API, GitHub also enforces other resource limitations. If your GraphQL query consumes too many resources, GitHub will terminate the request and return partial results along with an error indicating that resource limits were exceeded.

Examples of queries that may exceed resource limits:

Requesting thousands of objects or deeply nested relationships in a single query.
Using large first or last arguments in multiple connections simultaneously.
Fetching extensive details for each object, such as all comments, reactions, and related issues for every repository.

Query optimization strategies

Limit the number of objects: Use smaller values for first or last arguments and paginate through results.
Reduce query depth: Avoid requesting deeply nested objects unless necessary.
Filter results: Use arguments to filter data and return only what you need.
Split large queries: Break up complex queries into multiple simpler queries.
Request only required fields: Select only the fields you need, rather than requesting all available fields.

By following these strategies, you can reduce the likelihood of hitting resource limits and improve the performance and reliability of your API requests.

Rate limits and query limits for the GraphQL API

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