REST API Throttle Limits - 429 code

Author: Preston Mitchell

Date: May 30, 2025

Audience: Jama Connect Admins, Script / Extension developers

Products Applicable: Jama Connect®

Use Case

Jama Connect offers one of the most robust APIs in the market, capable of supporting over 25 million calls per month for each Jama Connect® environment. Currently, we do not charge customers for this level of API usage. Organizations utilize Jama Connect's REST API to integrate with other tools or automate routine tasks.

Examples of API use:

• Integrations: Jama Connect user stories are integrated with Atlassian Jira
• Activity Monitoring: if a value is updated, trigger an update on a different field
• Importing data: Automated test results at the final product build are imported and linked to the verification cases for baselining the final product specification state

Best Practice

To maintain optimal performance for all users, we implement a throttle limit of 10 calls per second for each Jama Connect® environment. This throttle is designed to distribute demand over time, allowing all necessary calls to be executed while preventing system degradation and minimizing any impact on user experience.

Jama API requests are throttled with a standard 429 response code until the request load decreases. A 429 response is sent to your script to signal the triggering of an exponential backup. It is the responsibility of the script authors/administrators to code scripts to handle this response. When receiving an HTTP 429 response, the API script should retry the action. Jama recommends implementing exponential backoff (i.e., sleeping and retrying) - so it might wait 3 seconds, then 5, then 8, then 13, and so on. 

If your scripts are not written to spread the load and respond correctly to 429 responses, they may fail to complete the desired tasks. This throttle limit balances the ability for enterprise customers to execute millions of calls over time while protecting the performance and user experience.

References

• Jama Connect REST API Documentation
• REST API Access Control
• Sample API Calls
• Request an API Consultation (requires a Success Program)
• Implement retries with exponential backoff - .NET

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