N-WaysQuotas and limits
How much each key may ask for, how to set your own caps, and the limits on each request.
Default limits. The limits below apply to every key. Your agreement may set others; ask if you need more.
Two kinds of limit
- Rate limits protect the service: how many requests a key may send a minute to each API. Over it, requests answer
429 RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDEDuntil the minute ends. - Daily caps are how much a key may use of an API a day, set on the key at your request. Over one, requests answer
429 QUOTA_EXCEEDEDuntil midnight in Lagos (UTC+1).
Each key is counted on its own: one key using up its limit never slows another key, of yours or anyone else’s. Your agreement may also set limits for your whole project, all its keys together (a minute’s and a day’s, per API or for every API): past one, every key of the project gets the same 429 answers, and the message says it is the project’s limit.
Rate limits
| API | Per key, a minute | Counted as |
|---|---|---|
| Maps (styles, tiles and fonts) | 6,000 requests | Each style, tile or font read (a map view reads 10 to 30) |
| Static maps | 600 | One per picture |
| Geocoding | 600 | One per request; each code in a postcode batch |
| Autocomplete | 1,200 | One per request (billed per session) |
| Address validation | 300 | One per request |
| Places | 600 | One per request |
| Routes | 300 | One per request |
| Route matrix | 3,000 elements | Origins × destinations |
| Route optimisation | 60 | One per request |
| Fares | 120 | One per request |
| Traffic | 60 | One per request |
| Fleet | 6,000 | One per request (a batch of positions is one) |
| Traffic feed | 60 | One per request |
| Photos | 600 | One per photo |
A key can have its own limit per API, higher or lower: tell us your expected peak at hello@nways.ng.
Your own caps
Set a daily cap per key and API in the partner console: for example 20,000 geocoding requests a day for your website’s key. A cap stops a bug in your code, or someone misusing a copied key, from using up your project’s calls or credit. The console alerts you at 50, 80 and 100% of a cap.
Usage and billing
Each API has free calls every month (counted per project, by the calendar month in Lagos). Calls past them are charged per 1,000 at the published prices (or those in your agreement), either against your project’s prepaid credit or on an invoice. Map fonts are never charged.
With prepaid credit, when it runs out, calls past an API’s free calls answer 402 BILLING_DISABLED; calls still within their free calls keep working. Credit you add in the console (Billing → Add credit) applies within seconds.
Usage
We count every call per key and API; the partner console shows them by day or hour, API, key, status and reason, with a CSV download. Every answer to an allowed call carries headers you can log:
| Header | Meaning |
|---|---|
X-RateLimit-Limit | Requests this key may send a minute to this API (your project’s limit instead, when that is the tighter one) |
X-RateLimit-Remaining | What’s left this minute |
X-RateLimit-Reset | Seconds until the minute ends |
Retry-After | On a 429: seconds to wait |
Request limits
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Geocoding | Query up to 200 characters; up to 20 results; 100 postcodes in a batch |
| Autocomplete | Up to 10 suggestions |
| Address validation | Address up to 300 characters |
| Places | Radius 200 m to 50 km; name up to 60 characters; 40 results a page |
| Routes | Up to 25 stops on the way; up to 2 alternatives (without stops) |
| Route matrix | 1 to 50 origins and destinations, 625 pairs; points within 400 km by car (200 km otherwise) |
| Route optimisation | 1 to 50 stops, 1 to 5 vehicles |
| Static maps | 32 to 1280 px a side; 100 markers; 10 paths |
| Tiles | Byte ranges of up to 8 MB, one range a request (as the Maps SDK reads them) |
| Traffic | A box under 3° across (the traffic feed: 2°) |
| Fleet | 1,000 positions a request; 10 webhook endpoints |
| Coverage | Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde and The Gambia |
Fair use
Don’t crawl the APIs or tiles to build a copy of N-Ways’ data, and don’t share a key outside your organisation. Unusual patterns (sweeping grids of coordinates, every tile of a country, whole map archives) are slowed or refused, with or without a key. Attribution and terms