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When a speech-to-text API returns HTTP 429, don’t retry immediately or indefinitely. Identify the provider’s specific limit, use its documented retry policy where available, add randomized delay to avoid synchronized retries, cap attempts and total time, and reduce the rate of new work while throttling continues.

What HTTP 429 means for speech recognition

HTTP 429 indicates that a request exceeded a rate or other provider limit, but the cause and remedy depend on the API. For example, Amazon Transcribe can return 429 LimitExceededException when concurrent-stream quota is exhausted or when concurrent streams increase too quickly. Waiting may help with a rate window, but it will not necessarily resolve a concurrency ceiling or a project-wide quota.

First inspect the response status, provider error code and message, and the request mode. A synchronous recognition request, batch job, and live stream can have different quotas and retry safety. Before automatically replaying audio or restarting a stream, verify whether the endpoint is idempotent and whether duplicate processing or billing can result.

Build a retry policy with four controls

Treat retrying as a policy, not a loop that runs whenever a request fails. Decide these four things independently:

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  • Retryable errors: Retry only errors documented as transient or rate-limiting for the specific API. Do not retry malformed or unauthorized requests as though waiting will fix them.
  • Delay: Follow provider guidance and any server retry hint that the API documents. If no exact schedule is specified, capped exponential backoff with jitter is a useful general pattern.
  • Budget: Set both a maximum number of attempts and an overall deadline. Stop when either limit is reached.
  • Concurrency: Slow or pause admission of new jobs when 429s persist; otherwise, queued work can keep pressure on the same limit while retries add more traffic.

Use jitter to prevent retry synchronization

With exponential backoff, delays grow after successive failures. Jitter randomizes the wait so many workers do not all retry at the same instant. AWS SDK guidance documents full-jitter backoff for throttling, with a 1,000 ms base delay and a 20,000 ms maximum per-delay cap. Those are AWS SDK values, not universal settings for every speech API or application.

Keep the retry budget finite

A retry budget should account for the user-facing deadline as well as the number of attempts. A long schedule may be reasonable for a background batch job but unusable for an interactive transcription. If the budget expires, surface the failure or defer the job through an explicit queue rather than letting workers retry forever.

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Use the target provider’s policy, not a copied schedule

Published schedules differ by provider and context. The values below are examples from the cited documentation, not interchangeable defaults.

Provider and context Documented guidance What to take from it
Azure fast transcription Microsoft Learn recommends up to five retries for transient failures including HTTP 429, with intervals of 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 seconds. Azure fast transcription guidance Use this schedule only when it applies to the fast transcription API and your request’s failure class.
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text SLA The SLA describes a first backoff interval of at least one second, increasing exponentially for consecutive errors to a maximum interval of 32 seconds. Speech-to-Text SLA This is the SLA’s backoff language, not a universal schedule for every Google API operation.
AWS SDK throttling behavior The AWS SDK reference documents exponential backoff with full jitter, a 1,000 ms throttling base delay, and a 20,000 ms per-delay cap. AWS SDK retry behavior SDK retry behavior is distinct from application-level limits and Amazon Transcribe’s service-specific concurrency guidance.

If an API documents a retry hint such as Retry-After, follow that API’s contract. The cited provider guidance does not establish a universal rule that all speech services return or honor that header.

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Reduce concurrency as well as retry frequency

Retry timing alone cannot fix excessive simultaneous work. Amazon Transcribe’s API guidance for LimitExceededException says: “Reduce your number of concurrent streams and try your request again using an exponential backoff strategy.” Its streaming guide also recommends gradual ramp-up when concurrent streams are increasing too quickly. See the Amazon Transcribe streaming API reference and streaming audio guidance.

For a fleet of workers, coordinate admission control rather than letting each worker independently retry at full speed. Reduce active streams or new job starts when throttling persists, then restore capacity gradually after the service accepts work. If several applications share credentials or a project, include their aggregate traffic in the diagnosis.

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Check quota scope before changing worker code

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text quotas apply at the developer-project level and are shared across applications and IP addresses using that project. A single worker may look modest while the combined project traffic exceeds a request or concurrency limit. Google notes that quota values can change, so check the live page for the correct API version and region before tuning production limits.

For context, the current Google Cloud Speech-to-Text v2 quota page lists, per region, 100 resource requests per 60 seconds, 150 operation requests per 60 seconds, 300 synchronous recognition requests per 60 seconds, and 150 batch requests per 60 seconds. Streaming has additional concurrency and aggregate-request limits. These are project quota figures, subject to change—not a guarantee that every project has identical effective capacity. See Cloud Speech-to-Text quotas and limits. Google’s error guidance describes quota exhaustion as reaching a per-minute or daily quota and points users toward reviewing or requesting a quota change.

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Implementation outline

The following pseudocode shows the decision flow; it is a general synthesis, not a vendor-prescribed combined algorithm. Substitute the target API’s documented error classes, retry hints, and schedule.

  1. Send the request and inspect the status plus provider-specific error code and body.
  2. If the error is terminal—for example, a malformed or unauthorized request—return it without retrying.
  3. If it is a documented retryable 429, check for a retry hint only if the API documents one, then calculate a provider-appropriate capped delay with randomized spread.
  4. Before waiting, check whether the next attempt fits within both the attempt limit and the overall deadline. If not, stop and return or defer the job.
  5. Wait, then retry the same operation only if replay is safe for that endpoint and request mode.
  6. When 429s persist, reduce or pause new concurrent work. If the retry budget is exhausted, stop rather than adding more traffic.

When waiting will not solve the problem

A 429 can point to a fixed concurrency/session limit, an aggregate project quota, or a rate window. Diagnose the provider’s error details and quota scope before increasing delays alone. Amazon Transcribe separately documents maximum session duration; reaching a hard session-duration limit requires starting a new session, not repeatedly retrying the same one. Consult its streaming guidance for the applicable session behavior.

Compare speech APIs on the details that determine recovery: what their 429 response means, its accompanying error code or body, documented retry hints, retryable versus terminal errors, backoff and jitter guidance, quota scope, concurrency limits, request mode, and safe replay behavior. Google Cloud Speech-to-Text supports synchronous, asynchronous, and streaming recognition, with distinct request patterns; see the Cloud Speech-to-Text overview.

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