How can a developer prevent an AI model from making too many API calls at once?

An AI model's API calls must be spaced out.

Submitting many calls at the same time can cause errors. This is true even if the total number of calls per second is low.

A developer must space out API calls. Submit each call with a delay of at least 250 milliseconds. This makes the calls arrive smoothly, not all at once. If an API call fails, a developer must not retry it immediately. Waiting for at least one second is important. Retrying too fast can make the problem worse and lead to longer bans. When processing many items in groups, a developer must pause between groups. A pause of 2 to 4 seconds between groups helps reset the API's rate limit window. This prevents new groups from starting with a burst of calls.

A developer writes code to send 10 requests to an AI model. The code uses a loop that sends all requests in less than 5 milliseconds. The AI model's API sees this as a sudden burst of traffic. The API returns an error message saying too many requests were made. The developer changes the code to wait 250 milliseconds before each request. This spreads the 10 requests over 2.5 seconds. The API now accepts all requests without errors.

More from the same record, pulled by shared topic — not written new for this page.

An AI model's API calls must be spaced out. Submitting many calls at the same time can cause errors. This is true even if the total number of calls per second is low.