How to Handle Rate Limits When Building a Chatbot with OpenAI API

API
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1

I want to build a chatbot using the OpenAI API. When the usage grows, won’t it hit the rate limit?

What should I do?

2

You can read about “tiers”, the cumulative amount paid into OpenAI for an organization, and the elapsed time since the first payment when making a new one, that can grant higher limits.

https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/rate-limits#usage-tiers

Then review the target model. OpenAI just increased the rates of GPT-5 to where the first tier won’t have even single requests that can fail.

https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-5

For handling, you’ll need your backend to have awareness of the individual model pools, and queue requests or say “too busy”.

1 Like
3

Welcome to the forum. There is a rate limits guide to help you manage it here.

Basically:

  • At the lower tiers, you need to implement a retry routine with a backoff timer, to comply with your limits without giving the user an error;
  • As you use more the API, you will naturally increase your limits.
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“I mean the API rate limit, which I think is 4000 requests per minute. When the number of people using my bot increases, this will become a problem.”

5

Yep.

I suggest @Ali_Zeiynali focussing on “ Retrying with exponential backoff”

Rather than calling the api synchronously you should do so asynchronously using a job system like sidekiq (which by default implements exactly that upon retry)

This should wrap the issue and allow you to focus on other things.

The experience for your users may result in slower responses when things get busy but they should be guaranteed a response and your bot will be resilient.

Any delays will be shorter the higher tier you become.