Why am I getting rate-limited (429 responses)?

A 429 Too Many Requests means you've hit a rate limit. Atlas rate-limits every endpoint per instance to protect against abuse, and returns standard headers so you can adapt:

• Retry-After — how long to wait before retrying.

• RateLimit-* headers — your remaining budget and reset window.

To fix it:

• Honor Retry-After and use exponential backoff on retries.

• Cache things like the JWKS instead of fetching per request (the SDKs do this).

• Batch management operations rather than looping one call per item.

• Use the right key — heavy server-side work should go through the backend SDK/secret key, not the frontend.

Sensitive auth endpoints also apply account lockout after repeated failures, which can look like rate limiting. See rate limits.