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

1. Per-exchange queues — do not share rate limiters across exchanges
2. Exponential backoff on 429s, but cap at 60 seconds
3. Cache aggressively — fee data does not change every minute
4. Batch requests where the API supports it (Binance batch endpoints)

More technical content: kkinvesting.io