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Managing API usage in your Zendesk account

Charles Nadeau
  • Edited
Zendesk Documentation Team

Zendesk Support Suiteall plans

Fastpath: Admin Center > Account > Usage > API

You can monitor the API usage in your account and increase your API usage limits if needed. It’s important to monitor your API usage to prevent being rate limited. You must be a Zendesk Support admin to view the API usage pages in Admin Center.

This article contains the following sections:

About the default limits for API usage

The following Ticketing and Help Center API rate limits apply to your Zendesk Suite and Support plans. In general, the rate limits for the Help Center API are the same as for the Support ticketing system API, but requests to the Help Center API don’t count against the rate limit of the Support API, and conversely. Rate limits also depend on the endpoints used, CPU time, and so on. See Rate limits.

Plan Requests per minute
Team 200
Growth 400
Professional 400
Enterprise 700
High volume API add-on 2500

Monitoring API usage against your rate limit (EAP)

Attention: This section shows an API usage summary and dashboard. This feature is available in an Early Access Program (EAP). You can apply for the EAP here.

To help you monitor API usage on your account, Zendesk provides an API usage summary. You can use this summary to view your current usage and compare the activity with the API against your rate limit.

To track API usage

  1. In Admin Center, click Home in the sidebar.

    A summary of your API usage appears on the Admin Center home page.

    The summary shows your API usage (over the last 7 days) as compared with your API rate limits. If you are over your limit, you’ll see a warning symbol (!) in the summary.

  2. To view more details about your API usage, click View details.

    You can also follow these instructions to view API usage details:

    • In Admin Center, click Account in the sidebar, then select Usage > API.

    A detailed dashboard appears that shows API usage.

    The dashboard shows an API usage summary supplemented by a time-based usage chart and tables. See About the API usage dashboard below for details

About the API usage dashboard

The dashboard covers API requests over time, while the tables provide a breakdown of total requests by callers and endpoints. The content is updated hourly.

7-day summary

The 7-day summary cards include the following information:

  • 429 errors: The API rate limit violations (HTTP 429 responses) during the last seven days, expressed as a percentage of the total number of requests during that period.
  • Limit near-breaches: The number of times API calls measured between 90 and 99% of the plan limit during the last seven days.
  • Limit approaches: The number of times API calls measured between 80 and 89% of the plan limit during the last seven days.

The Limit near-breaches and the Limit approaches cards enable admins to take proactive action against 429 errors.

API requests breakdown

This dashboard shows the total number of API requests, 429 errors, Limit near-breaches, and Limit approaches that occurred during the timeframe specified.

The clients are identified by the authentication credentials used. The table lists the names (or identities) of API tokens, OAuth clients, or users for basic authentication.

The dashboard includes drill-down options for time, caller, and product.

The following requests are excluded from activity:

  • Requests using session authentication, such as requests by Zendesk apps or client-side requests from JavaScript code in help center.
  • Anonymous requests requiring no authentication.

Timeframe and granularity

You can use the drop-down menus to show the chart by time window and granularity. Granularity options depend on the time window you select.

Time window Granularity options Notes
1 hour 15 minutes Most-recent hour with 15 minute intervals
1 day Hourly 24 hours with hourly intervals
7 days Hourly, Daily 7 days with hourly, or daily intervals
30 days Daily, Weekly, Monthly 30 days with daily, weekly, or monthly intervals
90 days Daily, Weekly, Monthly 90 days with daily, weekly, or monthly intervals
Custom range Varies depending on range Maximum range is 90 days

Summary

The dashboard summary shows the total number of API requests, 429 errors, Limit near-breaches, and Limit approaches for the timeframe specified.

Chart

The bar chart shows the number of API requests over time, based on the timeframe and granularity you specified. You can set the chart to show API usage data for the Number of requests or for the Peak rate (requests per minute).

  • Successful requests are shown in blue and 429 errors are shown in red.
  • The gray line shows the API rate limit (requests per minute) for your account.
  • You can hover your mouse over each data point to get more information.

The horizontal time scale is set to your local time, with the right-most mark the most recent. Peak rate shows the highest number of requests per minute within the time interval. Number of requests is the average number of requests per minute within the time interval.

The chart scales based on the amount of activity, which can hide the rate limit line. With enough activity in the example, a horizontal line representing the rate limit would appear at the rate limit for your plan.

Note: The chart doesn't address any end-point-specific rate limits such as those for Incremental Exports.

Tables

The tables below the chart show the following information:

  • Top five callers with the highest number of API requests
  • Top five most frequently called endpoints, based on total calls
  • Top five most frequently called endpoints, based on a count of 429 errors

API usage notifications

When you’re approaching your API usage limit, you’ll see in-product warning or error messages. These messages appear on the Admin Center home page and on the API usage page.

When you’re approaching your API usage limit, you’ll see an in-product warning message first. See example below. The default warning threshold amount is 80% of the plan limit.

If you go near or over your rate limit, you’ll receive an in-product critical threshold message. See example below. The critical threshold amount is 90% of the plan limit.

Reducing API usage

If you are approaching your rate limit, make sure you make only the requests that you need. Here are areas to explore for reducing the number of requests:

  • Optimize your code to eliminate any unnecessary API calls.
  • Cache frequently-used data.
  • Sideload related data.
  • Use bulk and batch endpoints.

For more information, see Best practices for avoiding rate limiting.

If you still have rate limit issues, you can increase your API rate limit by purchasing the High-volume API add-on. See Increasing your API rate limit in this article.

Increasing your API rate limit

If you are nearing your API rate limit or if you’re expecting a steep increase in API activity, you can purchase an add-on to increase the API usage limits for your account. If you want to purchase the High volume API add-on, contact your account representative or the Zendesk Sales team to purchase more storage.

The High volume API add-on increases the number of permitted API calls to a higher volume of 2,500 requests per minute. This add-on is already included with Suite Enterprise Plus. It is available for purchase in all Suite and Support plans.

The High volume API add-on increases a qualifying plan's limit to 2500 requests per minute to the Ticketing and Help Center APIs. It doesn't add an additional 2500 requests to the overall plan's limit.

Note: Subject to Zendesk’s prior written consent, Zendesk may allow you to increase API usage limits beyond 2500 requests per minute for an additional fee.

Tracking ticketing API activity against your rate limit (Legacy)

Attention: This section describes a legacy dashboard. Zendesk recommends using the API usage summary instead.

In addition to the API usage summary, you can also track API activity in the Apps and integrations section of the Admin Center.

To track ticketing API activity

  1. In Admin Center, click Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select APIs > Zendesk API.
  2. Click the Activity tab.

    activity tab

The page shows activity in the past 24 hours. The chart covers requests over time, while the table provides a breakdown of total requests by client. Peak requests is the highest number of requests in a single minute in the hour. Average request/min is the average number of requests per minute during the hour.

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13 Comments

  • Dave Dyson

    Hi Daniel.

    The API Rate limit on the Zendesk Support Professional plan is 400 requests per minute - you can see the rate limits for different plan levels here:

    Plan Rate Limits

    0
  • Rudolph Beaton

    @... - Is there any way to see larger time frames than just 24 hours? I'd like to see our API fire rate for the past 7 days.

    Thanks!

    2
  • Dave Dyson
    Hi Rudolph, I don't think there's a way to monitor your rate limit beyond the most recent 24 hour timeframe. We do have some best-practices information on how to avoid running up against your rate limit, in case that helps: Best practices for avoiding rate limiting
     
    If you'd like to see additional options for monitoring your API usage, please create a post in our Feedback - Platform: Apps & Integrations topic in the community forums, using this template so that our product team can better understand your use case. Thanks!
    -1
  • dave.passaro

    Is there an API a support app can use to check if the rate limit has been reached? I am not able to receive the 429 too many requests signal in my app, it appears in the console but the actual call being paused gets no feedback until the limit is up and it completes. 

    0
  • Dave Dyson
    Hi Dave,
     
    There's information about the current state of your rate limit in the API response headers – see Best practices for avoiding rate limiting
    0
  • dave.passaro

    Hi Dave,

    Thanks for that link, I see it demonstrates getting the headers via a curl, however using the following request can I receive these headers or error? I am not getting a 429 or any of this info in the response, but I might get it if I avoid using the client request?  

    options = {
    url:"/api/v2/tickets/" + this.ticketId + ".json",
    type:"PUT",
    contentType:"application/json",
    data:'',
    dataType:"json",
    };
    client.request(options); 
    0
  • Eric Nelson
    Zendesk Developer Advocacy
    Hey Dave,
     
    You can receive these headers via zaf by adding in the httpCompleteResponse parameter. 
     
            options = {
              url: "/api/v2/tickets/" + this.ticketId,
              httpCompleteResponse: true,
              type: "PUT",
              contentType: "application/json",
              data: JSON.stringify({
                "ticket": {
                  "comment": {
                    "body": "Thanks for choosing Acme Jet Motors.",
                    "public": true
                  }
                }
              }),
              dataType: "json",
            };
    0
  • Alexandre Dias

    Hello

    How can I know the API Rate usage by endpoint?

    Also is the Request Limit calculated base on the Average? or Peak requests?

    Thanks

     
    1
  • Dane
    Zendesk Engineering
    Hi Alexandar,
     
    For more information about API rate limits please refer to Usage limits. The normal rates will be based on calls per minute. 
     
    Hope this helps!
    0
  • Ian

    Hi, 

    Would it be possible to add the ability to monitor API activity beyond 24 hours? At the moment if you wanted to monitor stats like your peak API usage in an hour or a day, there's no real way to do this. This data is really useful for monitoring the effectiveness of add-ons like the "High Volume API", or it can allow you to notice trends around peak periods for API requests. 

    5
  • Asaf Max

    The API dashboard is not helpful at all in monitoring API usage. While it shows the peak RPM usage, it is limited to 24 hours. It also doesn't provide any information on usage for the individual endpoint rate limits being reached; as these are different from the 400/700/whatever is included with the various plans. I view this dashboard daily and don't see an peak usage but it's clear that a rate limit is still being reached and there is no way to identify which one, when it occurs and how often.

    Zendesk needs to give us better metrics to monitor these.

    2
  • Giancarlo Zaccaria

    Hi,

    It isn't good to have only 24 hours available on the monitor. Even worse, to be unable to check which API call has the most significant number of calls.

    Currently, I'm opening tickets to Zendesk Support/Premier Team so they send me reports from Datadog. Not practical at all.

    I understand the best practices and the workarounds, but it's a must-have regarding observability.

    4
  • Mike dela Rosa
    Zendesk Customer Care
    Hi Giancarlo! Totally understand your need and I would like to suggest submitting product feedback here: Feedback - Ticketing System (Support)

    Our product team checks the requested features with the most votes and could possibly add that to future roadmaps.
    0

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