Handling Crypto Exchange API Rate Limits Without Losing Your Mind

Building data pipelines that hit multiple crypto exchange APIs taught us a lot about rate limiting. Here is what works at kkinvesting.io. The Problem Every exchange has different rate limit rules, and they are enforced differently: Binance: IP-based, 1200 weight/min OKX: per-endpoint, 60 requests/2s Bybit: tier-based, 120 requests/min Kraken: call counter that decays over time Our Solution: Adaptive Rate Limiter class AdaptiveRateLimiter: def __init__(self, base_delay=0.5): self.delay = base_delay self.consecutive_429s = 0 def wait(self): time.sleep(self.delay) def on_success(self): self.consecutive_429s = 0 self.delay = max(self.delay * 0.9, 0.1) def on_rate_limit(self): self.consecutive_429s += 1 self.delay = min(self.delay * 2, 60) Key Patterns Per-exchange queues — do not share rate limiters across exchanges Exponential backoff on 429s, but cap at 60 seconds Cache aggressively — fee data does not change every minute Batch requests where the API supports it (Binance batch endpoints)