Usage Terms

The Otter API is provided free-of-charge upto 7000 queries per day. If you are using free access, we ask for two things:

1. ... link back to Topsy with the following "Powered by Topsy" logo:

2. ... allow us to say that you use Topsy. In legal speak, we ask that you agree to grant Topsy a non-exclusive, royalty-free, license to use your trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, domain names in presentations, marketing materials, customer lists and press releases.

Rate Limit

The Otter API uses a credit allocation system to ensure fair distribution of capacity and support multiple tiers of usage, both free and commercial. The allocation scheme allows for:

1. 3000 queries per day for free IP based credit limits
2. 7000 queries per day for free API based credits with an API key ( requires a simple sign-up via our API key sign-up interface http://manage.topsy.com/app )
3. Commercial grade API based limits for larger volumes. If your app requires larger volumes and you wish to get commercial access now, please send us a note at api@topsy.com. 

You can check the status of your queries with the following call:

http://otter.topsy.com/credit.json

In addition, each request contains rate limit information in the HTTP response headers.

Example HTTP Response Headers

X-RateLimit-Limit: 7000
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 2498
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1250791200

Paging Limits

All calls that take list parameters limit perpage to 100 and page to 10. This gives you access to top 1000 items on any list.

Client Identification

If you are using IP based credit limits, we request that you identify your application or service via the User-Agent HTTP header. This value should be the url to your service or application. This is not mandatory, but when under heavy load, we will give preference to clients that identify themselves. It is also possible to identify via X-Topsy-UA HTTP header, if modifying the User-Agent header is not possible.