Exceeding a secondary rate limit returns HTTP 403 or 429 with a message saying so; retry-after, when present, gives the seconds to wait, otherwise the wait is at least one minute.

GitHub REST API · GET /repos/{owner}/{repo} · HTTP 403

Status: 🔵 official · first seen 2026-10-20

What to do

  1. Wait the number of seconds in Retry-After, then retry (≤ 3 attempts).
  2. Retry with exponential backoff from 60000 ms × 2, cap 960000 ms, ≤ 5 attempts, with jitter.

Dimensions

env: prod · plan: any · region: any · account_state: any

Evidence

official doc: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/using-the-rest-api/rate-limits-for-the-rest-api#exceeding-the-rate-limit

Observations: none from reporters yet.

Machine access

curl -s https://apifacts.dev/v0/check \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"target":{"method":"GET","url":"https://api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}"},"error":{"status":403}}'

YAML: facts/github/secondary-rate-limit.yaml

Data: CC BY 4.0 · apifacts registry · This page is generated; edit the YAML, not the page.