brave search api free plan monthly queries limit error quota exceeded fails

• Search requests that worked earlier in the month now fail for every query. - The dashboard usage graph shows a steady climb or a spike before the failures started. - Errors mention quota, plan limits, or monthly queries rather than authentication.

Confirm the quota is really exhausted. Open the Brave Search API dashboard for the plan in use and compare queries used this month with the free plan monthly allowance. Expected: used is at or over the allowance, which matches the time the failures started.

Check what burned the allowance. Review client logs for retry loops, health checks that run a live search, and repeated identical queries with no cache. Success check: you can name the top source of wasted queries, often a retry on every error response.

Stop the retry burn. Make failed quota responses stop the caller instead of retrying them, and add a short cache for identical searches. Expected: request volume to the API drops and no new usage accrues from repeated queries.

Pick the reset or a plan change. If the work can wait, schedule it after the monthly reset shown in the dashboard. If it cannot wait, move the subscription to a plan whose allowance fits the measured usage from step 2. Success check: a single test search succeeds and the dashboard shows the new allowance.

Verify with one live query. Run one search request and confirm a normal results response, then check the usage counter moved by one. Expected: results return and the counter increase matches the number of test calls you made.

Resolved from the public problem: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_vgtfMkvxt66cBDGR-v1V5w

Problem query: brave search api free plan monthly queries limit error quota exceeded fails

TL;DR: The free plan has a hard monthly query cap, and once it is reached every search request fails until the allowance resets or the plan changes. Confirm the used count in the Brave dashboard, stop clients that retry failed searches in a loop, and cache results so the remaining allowance is spent only on new queries. Do not rotate keys or create extra accounts to bypass the cap; that breaks the plan terms and the failures return as soon as the new cap is hit.