API Rate Limit Policy Extractor

Extract API rate limits, quotas, burst rules, reset windows, overage behavior, and upgrade triggers from developer docs.

Why This Actor Is Useful

This actor extracts the API constraints that affect integration cost and reliability: request limits, reset windows, burst behavior, HTTP 429 rules, and upgrade triggers. It is useful before engineering teams commit to an API integration.

The actor is designed for developer docs, API policy pages, and pasted snippets. It keeps missing fields blank rather than inventing unavailable policy terms.

What It Extracts

• apiName - API.
• endpointOrPlan - Endpoint or plan.
• limitValue - Limit.
• window - Window.
• burstPolicy - Burst policy.
• resetPolicy - Reset policy.
• overageBehavior - Overage behavior.
• upgradeTrigger - Upgrade trigger.
• developerImpact - Developer impact.
• sourceUrl - Source URL.
• evidenceText - Evidence.

Practical Workflows

• Compare API quotas across vendors.
• Find throttling and upgrade risk before implementation.
• Build developer-experience scorecards.
• Monitor API policy pages for limit changes.

Input

Paste one or more public API documentation, quota, usage-limit, throttling, plan-limit, or rate-limit policy URLs. The actor scans those docs and returns request limits, windows, reset rules, overage behavior, upgrade triggers, and developer impact.

• startUrls - Add public developer docs, API limits, quota, throttling, or pricing-limit pages that describe request limits.
• sourceText - Optional: paste API limit sections, quota tables, HTTP 429 notes, plan-limit text, or developer documentation snippets.
• maxResults - Stop after this many useful rows. Most users can leave this at 100.
• requestTimeoutSecs - How long to wait for each URL. Increase only for slow public pages.

Example Input

{
    "sourceText": [
        "FlowPay API docs: Standard plan allows 1,000 requests per minute for /v1/payments. Burst requests may be throttled. Rate limits reset every 60 seconds. Higher limits require Enterprise upgrade.",
        "DataDock developer guide says free apps receive 10,000 calls per day, 100 calls per minute per token. Exceeding quota returns HTTP 429 until midnight UTC."
    ],
    "maxResults": 10,
    "requestTimeoutSecs": 20
}

Example Output

{
    "apiName": "FlowPay",
    "endpointOrPlan": "Standard plan",
    "limitValue": "1,000 requests per minute for /v1/payments",
    "window": "60 second",
    "burstPolicy": "Burst requests may be throttled",
    "resetPolicy": "reset every 60 seconds",
    "overageBehavior": "throttled",
    "upgradeTrigger": "Higher limits require Enterprise upgrade",
    "developerImpact": "throttled",
    "sourceUrl": "pasted://source-1",
    "evidenceText": "FlowPay API docs: Standard plan allows 1,000 requests per minute for /v1/payments. Burst requests may be throttled. Rate limits reset every 60 seconds. Higher limits require Enterprise upgrade."
}

Reliability Notes

The actor is intentionally lightweight and fast. It does not try to bypass captcha systems, private pages, paywalls, or login walls. When a site blocks direct fetching, paste the public visible text into sourceText; the same actor-specific parser will still produce structured rows.

Limitations

• The actor extracts only information present in the supplied source.
• Missing source details remain blank instead of being guessed.
• Highly unusual wording may require pasted text or cleaner source snippets for best results.

Output

Rows are written to the default Apify dataset with actor-specific fields and source evidence. The output is designed for spreadsheets, dashboards, client audits, procurement notes, SEO reports, developer research, and other marketplace buyer workflows.