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 whe