Freesound API enforces per-minute and per-day rate limits that are stricter for write operations

Standard Freesound API usage is throttled to 60 requests/minute and 2000 requests/day. Write operations — upload, describe, comment, rate and bookmark — carry a stricter limit of 30 requests/minute and 500 requests/day. When throttled, the API returns a 429 ‘Too many requests’ response with a ‘detail’ field naming which limit was exceeded. Higher limits can be requested from the Freesound administrators. When building a sample-sourcing tool that searches or downloads many sounds in one session, these limits are a practical ceiling that shapes batching: e.g. at 60 req/min, fetching 2000 sounds takes at least ~33 minutes, and the daily cap is hit at 2000.

Examples

A batch downloader hitting 60 requests/minute finishes 2000 sounds in ~33 minutes before the daily cap. Design around this by caching results and spreading requests over multiple days.

Assessment

Calculate how many requests per hour the standard Freesound rate limit allows. Then identify which operation type (read or write) is more constrained and explain why that matters when designing a live upload-and-search workflow.