Rate Limiting

To ensure performance, security, and fair usage, the Neolens API enforces strict rate limiting policies. These limits help prevent abuse, guarantee system availability, and align with medical data governance standards, including traceability, compliance, and ethical access to sensitive imaging data.

Rate limiting is not just a technical safeguard — it's also key to ensuring traceability, auditability, and responsible AI usage in healthcare applications.

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Standard Rate Limits

By default, the following limits apply:

Client Type	Limit	Period
Public API consumers	100 requests	per minute
Registered developers	1,000 requests	per minute
Hospital partners	Custom rate limits	per SLA

If these limits are exceeded, a 429 Too Many Requests error is returned.

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Best Practices

Optimize your usage

• Batch requests whenever possible.
• Use caching on client-side apps for read-only endpoints.
• Schedule heavy workloads during off-peak hours.

Monitor your rate usage

You can monitor your usage via the response headers:

• X-RateLimit-Limit
• X-RateLimit-Remaining
• X-RateLimit-Reset

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Custom Limits for Hospital Partners

Custom Access Policies

For enterprise and hospital partners, rate limits are configurable based on service-level agreements (SLAs). These may include:

• Higher thresholds for high-volume diagnostic tools
• Specific bandwidth windows for emergency cases
• Time-based throttling for batch jobs

For more information, contact your Neolens account manager.

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Error Handling

When the rate limit is exceeded, the API returns:

{
  "error": "Too Many Requests",
  "code": 429,
  "message": "Rate limit exceeded. Try again in 10 seconds."
}

Use the Retry-After header to implement smart retries and backoff mechanisms.

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Troubleshooting

Why am I getting 429 errors even when sending few requests?

Possible causes

You’re using the public token with multiple clients. You’re making rapid burst calls in under a second. Background jobs or retries may be unintentionally spamming an endpoint.

Check your logs and make sure requests are spaced properly and distributed efficiently across time.

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Regulatory and Ethical Considerations

In the healthcare domain, rate limiting plays a critical role in:

• Protecting infrastructure against overloads that could delay critical diagnoses
• Preventing unauthorized access or scraping of sensitive data
• Complying with GDPR and healthcare data privacy regulations
• Ensuring fair and auditable access across different roles and institutions

Need a higher rate limit ? Contact our support team or refer to your SLA.