> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://metamanager.dev/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Rate limits

> How many checks an hour, how they are counted, and what the headers say.

## The limits

| Plan      | Checks per hour | Saved URLs |  Projects | Audit pages | Audits per month | Monitors | Sharing | PDF | API keys | Cards/month |
| :-------- | --------------: | ---------: | --------: | ----------: | ---------------: | -------: | ------: | --: | -------: | ----------: |
| Anonymous |              50 |          — |         — |           — |                — |        — |       — |   — |        — |           — |
| Free      |             100 |          3 |         1 |          25 |                1 |        — | summary |   — |        1 |         100 |
| Pro       |           1,000 |  unlimited | unlimited |         500 |               50 |        3 |    full | yes |       10 |       5,000 |

[Site audits](/docs/guides/site-audits) are metered separately from the hourly check
quota, and [scheduled runs](/docs/guides/monitoring) are not metered at all — the
monitor cap bounds them instead. One 500-page audit would otherwise consume half a Pro account's hour, and
the two features would starve each other.

Signing in raises your limit rather than lowering it. A free account can always
do more than a stranger — otherwise signing in would be a downgrade.

## A sliding window, not a bucket that empties on the hour

Timestamps are stored, not counters. Your allowance is "requests in the last
sixty minutes", which means it recovers continuously instead of all at once —
so there is no cliff at the top of the hour and no incentive to wait for one.

Requests that are **denied are not recorded**. Hammering a limit you have
already hit does not extend it.

## Headers

Every response carries the current state:

```text theme={null}
x-ratelimit-limit: 50
x-ratelimit-remaining: 48
x-ratelimit-reset: 3593
```

`x-ratelimit-reset` is seconds until the oldest request in your window falls
out — the point at which you regain one unit, not a full reset.

A 429 adds `retry-after`, also in seconds:

```json theme={null}
{
  "error": "rate_limited",
  "message": "Limit of 50 inspections per hour reached. Try again in 3502 seconds.",
  "retry_after": 3502
}
```

## What the budget is keyed to

Anonymous requests are keyed by IP. **Signed-in requests are keyed by account**,
which means the quota follows the person rather than the network — an office
behind one NAT shares a bucket while anonymous and stops sharing the moment
they sign in.

## Sign-in emails have their own, much tighter limit

Five per hour, counted per address **and** per IP.

Limiting only by IP would leave an email-bombing vector: a hundred addresses
from one machine is caught, but one address from a hundred machines is not —
and the victim is whoever owns the inbox.

A rate-limited login still answers `202` with the usual message, because saying
"too many attempts for this address" would confirm the address is worth trying.

## If the limiter is unavailable

It fails **open**. A rate limiter that is down should not take the checker down
with it.

## API keys share the account's bucket

Every API key on an account counts against the **same** hourly limit your
browser does. Creating ten keys does not give you ten times the quota — the
bucket is the account, not the key.

A request with a key that does not resolve is rejected outright rather than
falling back to an anonymous, IP-based limit.

## Social cards are counted when drawn

A card is drawn once and cached, so a page shared a thousand times costs one
card against your allowance. Cards redraw about daily so an edited title appears
without you doing anything.

Going over does not break previews — cards keep being drawn, carrying the
MetaManager mark until the month rolls over.