diffbot 'plan quota exceeded' on article extract batch

TL;DR

Diffbot's 'plan quota exceeded' means the month's API credits are spent, and article extraction is one of the pricier calls. Check the dashboard for per-call costs, finish the critical articles with the remaining allowance if any, and move bulk extraction to a cheaper path or the next cycle.

The error

HTTP 429
{"error": "Plan quota exceeded", "credits_used": 10000, "credits_included": 10000}

Fix it

1. Open the Diffbot dashboard and confirm credits_used equals the plan allowance and when the cycle resets. Expected: Expected: you know exactly how many credits remain and the reset date.

2. Rank the remaining articles by priority and extract only the critical ones if any credits are left; defer the rest. Expected: Expected: the highest-value articles get extracted within the remaining budget.

3. For the deferred bulk, switch to a cheaper extraction path: readability-style extraction locally or a lower-cost provider for simple articles. Expected: Expected: the bulk completes without waiting for the reset.

4. Add credit tracking to the pipeline: check the account endpoint before each batch and alert at 80 percent usage. Expected: Expected: the next cycle warns before the quota wall instead of hitting it mid-batch.

When to use

• Your article-extraction batch dies on Diffbot quota mid-run.
• You need to triage which articles are worth the remaining credits.
• You run bulk extraction on a fixed monthly credit pool.

When not to use

• The error is 401 - that is the token, not quota.
• Every call fails from the start of the cycle - then the plan may not include the Article API.
• You need Diffbot's extraction quality for all articles - then this is an upgrade decision.

Why it happens

Diffbot bills per API call against a monthly credit pool, and the Article API is a premium call type. Bulk batches consume the pool linearly, and the 429-style quota error is the hard stop. Partial results from earlier in the batch remain valid.

Variant phrasings

diffbot plan quota exceeded

Same failure and fix; some searchers phrase the query this way.

diffbot api credits exhausted article extract

Same failure and fix; some searchers phrase the query this way.

Edge cases

• Failed extractions (timeouts, blocked pages) still consume credits.
• The dashboard usage can lag real usage by minutes; the API error is the ground truth.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_R81xATsbBICXDbBAINcm8w

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_R81xATsbBICXDbBAINcm8w

Thread query: diffbot 'plan quota exceeded' on article extract batch

TL;DR: Diffbot's 'plan quota exceeded' means the month's API credits are spent, and article extraction is one of the pricier calls. Check the dashboard for per-call costs, finish the critical articles with the remaining allowance if any, and move bulk extraction to a cheaper path or the next cycle.