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LinkedIn Scraping Rate Limits

Our LinkedIn scraping API is designed to respect LinkedIn’s terms of service while providing reliable data access for legitimate business use cases.

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Current Rate Limits

Default Rate Limit: 10 calls per second This rate limit applies to all LinkedIn scraping endpoints and is calculated on a per-API-key basis.

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Rate Limit Headers

Every API response includes rate limit information in the headers: 
X-RateLimit-Limit: 10
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 7
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1642680000
  • X-RateLimit-Limit - Your current rate limit (requests per second)
  • X-RateLimit-Remaining - Number of requests remaining in the current window
  • X-RateLimit-Reset - Unix timestamp when the rate limit resets

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Handling Rate Limits

When you exceed the rate limit, you’ll receive a 429 Too Many Requests response: 
{
  "error": "rate_limit_exceeded",
  "message": "Too many requests, please slow down",
  "code": "RATE_001",
  "request_id": "01ARZ3NDEKTSV4RRFFQ69G5FB1",
  "details": {
    "limit": 10,
    "window": "1 second",
    "retry_after": 1
  }
}

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Best Practices

  • Implement exponential backoff when receiving 429 responses
  • Respect the retry_after value in the error response
  • Monitor rate limit headers to avoid hitting limits
  • Use caching wisely - Set cached: true for less time-sensitive data
  • Distribute requests evenly rather than sending bursts

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Caching Strategy

Our LinkedIn scraping API offers intelligent caching to optimize performance and respect rate limits:
  • Cached requests (cached: true) - Return data up to 30 days old
  • Fresh requests (cached: false) - Return data no more than 1 minute old
  • Default behavior - Caching is enabled by default (cached: true)
Use cached requests for most use cases to improve performance and reduce rate limit consumption. Only use fresh requests when you need the most up-to-date information.

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Need Higher Limits?

If your use case requires higher rate limits, we can accommodate your needs quickly. Contact our support team:
  • Email: hello@midbound.ai
  • Response time: We’re fast - typically respond within hours, not days
  • Custom limits: We can provide custom rate limits based on your specific requirements
Include the following information in your request:
  • Your current API key
  • Expected requests per second/minute
  • Use case description
  • Timeline for when you need the increased limits

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Example Implementation

Here’s a simple Python example showing how to handle rate limits: 
import requests
import time

def scrape_linkedin_profile_with_retry(profile_id, api_key, cached=True, max_retries=3):
    url = "https://api.mdb.tools/v1/linkedin/profile"
    headers = {
        "x-api-key": api_key,
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
    }
    payload = {
        "id": profile_id,
        "cached": cached
    }
    
    for attempt in range(max_retries):
        response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload)
        
        if response.status_code == 200:
            return response.json()
        elif response.status_code == 429:
            # Rate limited - wait and retry
            retry_after = response.json().get('details', {}).get('retry_after', 1)
            time.sleep(retry_after)
            continue
        else:
            # Other error
            response.raise_for_status()
    
    raise Exception(f"Failed after {max_retries} retries")