Rate Limits

Rate Limits

HTTP 429 Responses

The Bigship API returns HTTP 429 when you exceed the rate limit. The SDK surfaces these as errors.

isRateLimitError() Type Guard

Use the isRateLimitError() helper to identify rate limit responses:

import { isRateLimitError } from "bigship-sdk";

try {
  await client.createOrder(orderPayload);
} catch (err) {
  if (isRateLimitError(err)) {
    console.error(`Rate limited. Retry after ${err.retryAfterSeconds}s`);
  }
}

SDK Does NOT Auto-Retry 429 by Default

By default, the SDK retries on status codes 502, 503, and 504 but not 429. Add 429 to retryOnStatusCodes to enable automatic retries:

const client = new BigshipClient({
  clientId: process.env.BIGSHIP_CLIENT_ID,
  clientSecret: process.env.BIGSHIP_CLIENT_SECRET,
  retryOnStatusCodes: [429, 502, 503, 504],
});

Recommended: Add 429 to retryOnStatusCodes

For most production workloads, adding 429 to the retry list is recommended:

const client = new BigshipClient({
  clientId: process.env.BIGSHIP_CLIENT_ID,
  clientSecret: process.env.BIGSHIP_CLIENT_SECRET,
  retryOnStatusCodes: [429, 502, 503, 504],
  maxRetries: 3,
  retryDelayMs: 1000,
  retryBackoffMultiplier: 2,
});

Exponential Backoff Configuration

Configure exponential backoff to space out retries:

Option	Default	Description
maxRetries	3	Maximum number of retry attempts
retryDelayMs	1000	Initial delay before the first retry (ms)
retryBackoffMultiplier	2	Multiplier applied to delay after each retry

With the defaults, retry delays are: 1s → 2s → 4s.

const client = new BigshipClient({
  clientId: process.env.BIGSHIP_CLIENT_ID,
  clientSecret: process.env.BIGSHIP_CLIENT_SECRET,
  retryOnStatusCodes: [429, 502, 503, 504],
  maxRetries: 5,
  retryDelayMs: 500,
  retryBackoffMultiplier: 2,
});
// Delays: 500ms → 1s → 2s → 4s → 8s