Our X-RateLimit-Reset headers are bad and we should feel bad
2026-05-14 16:49 UTC
I've found at least four different formats used on the Fediverse for the X-RateLimit-Reset header:
A datestamp (Mastodon)
Unix epoch in seconds
Time offset in seconds (N seconds from now)
Unix epoch in milliseconds (Holos)
It's possible to use some heuristics for these (looks like a date, looks like an integer, range of the integer), which are pretty reliable.
The new RateLimit headers from IETF are very nice, but don't seem to be well-supported yet.
Replies (2)
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@evan@activitypub.space 2026-05-14 16:49
Of course, you can just bang on the API until you get 429 restricted, too.
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@ryan@m29.us 2026-05-14 17:05
@evan I have a Python function I've built up over time for handling rate limiting headers (no canonical location for it; I just copy it around when needed). I've come across epoch (GitHub) and ISO 8601 (Mastodon, Jira), but haven't seen the other two. I'll take a look at the RateLimit spec, thanks. https://forge.colobox.com/rfinnie/rf-tools/src/branch/main/bin/mastodon-downloader#L50 (For the last few weeks I've been working on moving stuff to Forgejo, and I'm surprised their API doesn't have rate limit headers.)