Fix: Rate Limit Exceeded (429)

Error Message:

"429: Too Many Requests" "Rate limit exceeded. Please try again later." "You have exhausted your daily quota."

The Cause

  1. Rapid Fire: You sent too many messages in a short minute (RPM limit).
  2. Daily Cap: You hit the hard cap of your pricing tier (TPD limit).
  3. Sub-Agent Explosion: You spawned 10 sub-agents, and they all hit the API simultaneously, triggering a burst limit.

The Fix

1. Wait (Exponential Backoff)

If it's a burst limit (RPM), wait 60 seconds.

  • Claude usually retries automatically, but if it fails, give it a minute.

2. Reduce Complexity

  • Stop Sub-Agents: Don't ask for "Parallel research on 20 topics". Do 5 at a time.
  • Shorter Prompts: Don't paste a 1000-line log file if you only need the last 50 lines analyzed.

3. Check Billing

  • Go to Settings -> Billing.
  • Did you hit your monthly hard limit? (e.g., $100 cap). You may need to increase it manually.

Prevention

  • Usage Dashboard: Keep the usage dashboard open during heavy workloads.
  • Optimize: Use the Haiku model for simple tasks (it consumes fewer "value" limits than Opus).