Which types of APIs have you integrated in the past 6 months? (Select all that apply.)
- Public REST/HTTP APIs
- GraphQL APIs
- gRPC services
- WebSocket/streaming APIs
- Cloud provider APIs
- Third-party SaaS APIs
- Internal microservice APIs
- SDK-only integrations
In the past 3 months, how often did you reach a rate limit?
- Never
- Once
- 2 to 3 times
- About monthly
- About weekly
- Several times per week
- Daily or more
Which rate-limit mechanisms have you encountered recently? (Select all that apply.)
- Fixed requests per minute/hour
- Burst plus sustained (token bucket)
- Leaky bucket
- Concurrency caps (simultaneous requests)
- Daily or monthly quotas
- Cost/compute unit budgets
- IP-based limits
- User or org-based limits
- Adaptive/dynamic throttling
Overall, how fair were the rate limits you encountered in the past 3 months?
Range: 1 – 10
Min: Very unfairMid: NeutralMax: Very fair
Please rate your agreement with the following statements about limits and communication.
| Rows | Strongly disagree | Disagree | Neutral | Agree | Strongly agree |
|---|
| Documentation explains limits clearly. | • | • | • | • | • |
| Error messages give actionable guidance. | • | • | • | • | • |
| Response headers expose remaining quota. | • | • | • | • | • |
| Sandbox/test limits are representative of production. | • | • | • | • | • |
| Pricing tiers and upgrade paths are transparent. | • | • | • | • | • |
How much did rate limits affect your development productivity in the past 3 months?
Scale: 10 (star)
Min: No impactMax: Severe impact
What was the severity of the most significant rate‑limit incident for your users or business in the past 3 months?
Range: 1 – 10
Min: Not severeMid: ModerateMax: Extremely severe
When you reach a rate limit, which actions do you typically take? (Select all that apply.)
- Exponential backoff/retry
- Queue or defer requests
- Batch or cache requests
- Optimize to reduce calls
- Request a higher tier/limit increase
- Switch to an alternative provider
- Use mirrors/proxies
- Throttle or limit end-user features
Allocate 100 points across the factors that most improve your perception of rate-limit fairness.
Total must equal 100
- Clear documentation
- Transparent tiers and upgrade paths
- Predictable/consistent enforcement
- Helpful error messages and headers
- Representative sandbox limits
- Flexible burst handling or grace periods
- Responsive limit-increase process
Min per option: 0Whole numbers only
What percentage price increase would you accept for approximately 2× higher limits on a critical API? Enter a whole number (e.g., 25 for 25%).
Accepts a numeric value
Whole numbers only
Attention check: To confirm attention, please select "Never" here.
- Never
- Rarely
- Sometimes
- Often
- Always
Which role best describes your current position?
- Backend developer
- Full-stack developer
- Frontend developer
- Mobile developer
- Data/ML engineer
- SRE/DevOps
- Product manager
- Founder/CTO
- Other
How many years have you worked professionally with APIs?
- Less than 1
- 1-2
- 3-5
- 6-10
- 11 or more
What is your company size?
- Just me
- 2-10
- 11-50
- 51-200
- 201-1,000
- 1,001-5,000
- 5,001+
Which region are you primarily based in?
- North America
- Europe
- APAC
- Latin America
- Middle East
- Africa
- Other
Briefly describe a recent incident where rate limits affected your workflow or customers. What changed afterward?
Max 600 chars
AI Interview: 2 Follow-up Questions on rate limits and fairness
AI InterviewLength: 2Personality: Expert InterviewerMode: Fast Thank you for completing the survey! Your feedback helps improve developer experiences with rate limits.