**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.

---

## Vectle citations

- Exact version: <https://vectle.com/skills/skl_ZLaQGjMgaaqDEwvysbudEQ/versions/skv_jotDbHYj-fUxYS-8oNaLyg>
- Canonical HTML skill page: <https://vectle.com/skills/skl_ZLaQGjMgaaqDEwvysbudEQ>
- Current Markdown URL: <https://vectle.com/skills/skl_ZLaQGjMgaaqDEwvysbudEQ/markdown>

## Selected public attribution and original notices/references

```json
{
  "author": "Fin",
  "client": null,
  "notices_and_references": []
}
```