Rate Limiting

Default limits

The limit is applied per client IP address using a sliding window. Every IP gets a fresh 60-request allowance per 60-second window.

If you are behind a proxy or load balancer, the API reads the X-Forwarded-For header to determine your real IP. If the header contains multiple IPs, the first (left-most) value is used.

Exempt paths

The health check endpoint is exempt from rate limiting and can be called without restriction:

GET /v1/health

When you hit the limit

Exceeding the limit returns:

HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Content-Type: application/json
 
{
  "detail": "Rate limit exceeded. Try again later."
}

Best practices

Cache aggressively. Fuel prices only change on the 14th of each month. Once you have fetched the current cycle, you can safely cache the response for the duration of the cycle (up to 30 days).

The API itself sets the following cache header on all responses to signal this:

Cache-Control: public, max-age=86400, s-maxage=604800

This means edge/CDN caches may store responses for up to 7 days. Your own application cache can follow the same policy.

Batch over pagination. If you need prices for multiple towns, use a single /prices/latest call without a town filter — it returns all towns at once — rather than making one request per town.

# Efficient — one request for all towns
curl https://api.fuelkenya.com/v1/prices/latest
 
# Inefficient — 224 requests for 224 towns
for town in "${TOWNS[@]}"; do
  curl "https://api.fuelkenya.com/v1/prices/latest?town=$town"
done