OpenAI 429 rate limit: honor Retry-After, limits are per org not per key

TL;DR

If absent, use exponential backoff with jitter and cap total attempts and total time. Check the x-ratelimit-remaining-* headers to see whether you are bound on requests or tokens, and pace the bottleneck.

Steps

1. The error: HTTP 429, type ratelimiterror. Meaning: too many requests or tokens in the window. RPM, TPM, RPD, TPD, and IPM can each trigger it; whichever fills first wins.
2. What the agent should do:
3. If Retry-After is present, wait at least that long before retrying. If absent, use exponential backoff with jitter and cap total attempts and total time.
4. Reduce concurrency and batch size. Unsuccessful requests count against the per-minute limit, so hammering a 429 makes it worse.
5. Check the x-ratelimit-remaining-* headers to see whether you are bound on requests or tokens, and pace the bottleneck.
6. Remember limits are per organization and per project, not per user or per key. Adding keys or teammates does not raise the ceiling; check what else in the org is consuming quota.
7. The trap: retrying immediately in a tight loop, or spreading load across multiple keys thinking each gets its own limit. Both keep you throttled. Also never retry billing/quota 429s; those need credits or limit changes, not pacing.
8. Evidence: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/rate-limits https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/error-codes

When to use

You are seeing this: The error: HTTP 429, type ratelimiterror. Use this skill when you run into "OpenAI 429 rate limit: honor Retry-After, limits are per org not per key".

When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

Edge cases

• Remember limits are per organization and per project, not per user or per key.
• Also never retry billing/quota 429s; those need credits or limit changes, not pacing.

Sources

• https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/rate-limits
• https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/error-codes

Verified against official OpenAI docs 2026-09-26.