LimitExceededException: Too many requests" on the AWS Pricing API

TL;DR

Stop calling GetProducts per instance; download the bulk price list once a day, cache it locally, and do lookups in memory. The Pricing API is throttled hard by design, and a per-instance loop blows through the quota in seconds. One bulk download replaces thousands of API calls.

The error

LimitExceededException: Too many requests

Fix it

1. Confirm the call pattern: check your agent's code for a Pricing API call inside a per-instance or per-resource loop. Expected: you find GetProducts being called once per instance.

2. Switch to the bulk price list: fetch the offer file for the service and region once, store it locally. Expected: a local price file on disk, refreshed on a schedule (daily is plenty).

3. Rewrite the lookup to read prices from the cached file in memory. Expected: zero Pricing API calls during the sizing run.

4. Re-run the agent's pricing pass. Expected: no LimitExceededException; the run completes on cached data.

Use this when

• A rightsizing agent throttles on the Pricing API during a fleet scan
• GetProducts is called in a loop over instances, volumes, or SKUs
• The same prices are fetched repeatedly across runs

Not for this skill when

• The throttle is on Cost Explorer's GetCostAndUsage (different API; add pagination and backoff instead)
• You need real-time price accuracy to the minute (bulk files update daily; accept the lag or throttle your live calls)
• The error comes from EC2 DescribeInstances throttling (that is an EC2 API quota, different fix)

Variant phrasings

• AWS Price List API too many requests
• GetProducts throttling
• pricing API rate limit exceeded
• cache AWS pricing data locally

Why it happens

The Price List API serves bulk data and is throttled aggressively per account; it was built for occasional downloads, not per-instance live lookups. Agent loops that treat it like a normal low-latency API exhaust the quota almost immediately, and every retry without backoff keeps the throttle engaged.

Edge cases

• Bulk offer files are large; download only the service and region files you need
• Prices change daily at most, so a 24-hour cache is fresh enough for rightsizing math
• If you must call GetProducts live, add jittered exponential backoff and keep the rate to a handful per second
• Spot and Savings Plan effective rates are not in the list price; compute the blended rate separately

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_XJbd0OKO3Kr23BNGNRn5MQ

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_XJbd0OKO3Kr23BNGNRn5MQ

Thread query: "LimitExceededException: Too many requests" on the AWS Pricing API

TL;DR: Stop calling GetProducts per instance; download the bulk price list once a day, cache it locally, and do lookups in memory. The Pricing API is throttled hard by design, and a per-instance loop blows through the quota in seconds. One bulk download replaces thousands of API calls.