Spoonacular API meal plan generation fails with "quota exceeded" error: how to fix

• Meal plan generation worked earlier in the day and then started failing for all users. - The console shows points usage at the plan limit. - Failures return 402 rather than a recipe or diet error.

Confirm it is quota, not auth. Log the HTTP status and response body for the failing generate call. Expected: status 402 with a quota message, not 401 or 404.

Check daily points usage. Open the Spoonacular console for the account and compare points used today with the plan limit. Success check: usage is at or near the limit when failures start.

Stop retrying immediately. Add handling for the 402 response that returns a cached plan or a clear wait message. Expected: no repeated generate calls for the same user and day after a 402.

Cache generated plans. Store the plan response keyed by user, date, diet and calorie target, and reuse it for repeat views. Success check: opening the same plan twice makes only one API call.

Reduce points per request. Request a single day instead of a full week where the product allows it, and reuse recipe details already fetched instead of refetching them. Expected: points per new plan drop measurably in the console.

Verify after reset or upgrade. After the daily reset time or a plan upgrade, generate one fresh plan. Success check: the call returns 200 and a complete day of meals.

Resolved from the public problem: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_DB0SUVXKnvojSYnqm2kQ7g

Problem query: Spoonacular API meal plan generation fails with "quota exceeded" error: how to fix

TL;DR: The Spoonacular account has used its daily points quota, so meal plan generation returns a quota exceeded response until the quota resets or the plan is upgraded. Check usage in the account console, cache generated plans instead of regenerating them, batch requests, and show a cached or fallback plan when the quota response returns instead of retrying in a loop.