Handle Polymarket API limits by tracking each service and endpoint separately, honoring a server-provided Retry-After delay when one is supplied, and keeping retries finite. For the market WebSocket, send the documented PING frame every 10 seconds. If the connection drops, treat your local market data as stale, reconnect with bounded backoff, restore subscriptions, and verify state before trading again.
Why one rate-limit counter is not enough
Polymarket publishes different limits for different services and endpoints. Its rate-limit page describes Cloudflare throttling by IP over sliding windows; requests over a limit may be delayed or queued rather than rejected immediately. CLOB order and cancellation requests also have separate per-signer token-bucket limits. A bot can therefore be within one budget and still encounter pressure on another. See Polymarket’s rate-limit documentation for current endpoint values and details.
Published values can change. For example, the page lists a CLOB general-traffic limit of 9,000 requests per 10 seconds, alongside endpoint-specific market-data and trading limits. Treat these as operational settings to verify against the current documentation, not permanent constants to hard-code.
Track budgets by request class
- Maintain separate counters for service and endpoint, and for signer where CLOB order or cancellation limits apply.
- Smooth bursts instead of sending a large batch at once. Batch only on endpoints that support it.
- Use WebSocket streaming for live market changes where appropriate, rather than polling the same information repeatedly.
- Record endpoint, method, status, elapsed time, and sanitized request context. Delays or queueing are useful signals that your client is consuming capacity.
These are client-side engineering practices, not guarantees about how Polymarket will handle every request.
How to handle HTTP 429 and other retryable responses
When a response includes Retry-After, use that delay before retrying. The Polymarket Data API v2 reference describes retryable 429 and 503 responses with a delay expressed in seconds. It also distinguishes a server-side database connection timeout, returned as a 503 request_timeout, from rate limiting. Keep that behavior scoped to the Data API reference; do not assume every Polymarket service uses identical error handling. See the Data API v2 reference.
Use a bounded retry policy
- Classify the response. Retry only transient failures; do not retry invalid input or authentication and signature errors as though they were temporary.
- If the response supplies
Retry-After, wait for the specified interval. Otherwise, choose a client-side backoff with jitter to avoid synchronized retry bursts. - Set a maximum number of attempts or an overall deadline. Stop when the retry budget is exhausted and surface the failure for handling or diagnosis.
- Log the response status and timing so repeated throttling, timeouts, or endpoint-specific slowdowns can be distinguished.
The cited documentation does not establish a universal retry count or backoff schedule. Choose limits that fit your bot’s latency and risk requirements rather than presenting a client policy as a Polymarket rule.
Do not blindly repeat an ambiguous order submission
If an order submission times out, the client may not know whether the server accepted it. Reconcile the order state before sending another submission; otherwise, a retry could create an unintended duplicate. This is different from retrying a safe read request and should be treated as a state-recovery problem.
Keep the market WebSocket alive
The current Polymarket real-time data documentation gives the market WebSocket URL as wss://ws-subscriptions-clob.polymarket.com/ws/market. A client subscribes to the market topic with one or more asset or token IDs. Documented events include book, price_change, last_trade_price, and tick_size_change. See the market-channel documentation.
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Send the text frame PING every 10 seconds; the server replies with PONG. Keep this application-level heartbeat independent of market-event traffic. A quiet market can produce no updates without indicating that the connection is dead.
Reconnect without trading on stale data
The market-stream documentation does not prescribe a client reconnect algorithm, retry count, or backoff ceiling. The following is a bot-side recovery approach, not an exchange requirement:
- Detect failure: treat a socket close, socket error, or missed heartbeat as a disconnect.
- Invalidate the live view: mark the local book stale immediately and prevent trading decisions from relying on it. Track both disconnect duration and stale-book age.
- Reconnect with limits: use bounded exponential backoff with jitter so repeated failures do not produce a rapid reconnect loop. Set a ceiling and stop or alert when the recovery deadline is exceeded.
- Restore subscriptions: after reconnecting, send the market subscription again with the token IDs the bot needs.
- Rebuild or reconcile state: obtain or await a fresh book snapshot, then apply live updates in a way that leaves the local view coherent. Do not resume trading until that condition is met.
Reconnect success alone does not prove that a locally cached book is current. The bot needs a fresh, coherent state before treating market data as live again.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Choose policies by operation, not by one global retry rule
| Operation | Budget or delay to consider | Retry and recovery decision |
|---|---|---|
| Public read request | Service and endpoint IP-based budget; honor Retry-After when returned |
Retry transient failures within a finite attempt or time budget. |
| Authenticated order write | Applicable IP-side budget and per-signer order token-bucket limit | If acceptance is ambiguous after a timeout, reconcile order state before resubmitting. |
| Cancellation | Applicable IP-side budget and separate per-signer cancellation token-bucket limit | Account for cancellation capacity independently and verify resulting order state where needed. |
| Market WebSocket | Application heartbeat every 10 seconds; reconnect schedule is a client choice | Restore subscriptions and verify a fresh, coherent book before resuming trading. |
Use the current endpoint documentation for budgets, and keep server-provided delays distinct from client-selected backoff. The key safety check is whether repeating an operation is harmless or whether order and market state must first be reconciled.
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