Unable to access *ratelimit* headers in Node SDK due to exception

API
1

I’m using the OpenAI Node.js SDK and have encountered an issue when handling rate limits. Specifically, when a 429 error occurs, an exception is thrown, and the exception object does not include rate limit headers such as x-ratelimit-reset-requests. This makes it challenging to implement proper retry logic based on the server’s suggested wait times.

This is on the responses.create function, and happens both with and without withResponse()

The exception object does contain some headers, but not the ratelimit headers, e.g.:

{
  "status": 429,
  "headers": {
    "alt-svc": "h3=\":443\"; ma=86400",
    "cf-cache-status": "DYNAMIC",
    "cf-ray": "[redacted]",
    "connection": "keep-alive",
    "content-length": "354",
    "content-type": "application/json",
    "date": "Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:13:46 GMT",
    "openai-organization": "[redacted]",
    "openai-processing-ms": "5977",
    "openai-version": "2020-10-01",
    "server": "cloudflare",
    "set-cookie": "[redacted]",
    "strict-transport-security": "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload",
    "x-content-type-options": "nosniff",
    "x-request-id": "[redacted]"
  },
  "request_id": "[redacted]",
  "error": {
    "message": "Rate limit reached for gpt-4.1 in organization [redacted] on tokens per min (TPM): Limit 30000, Used 18271, Requested 16921. Please try again in 10.384s. Visit https://platform.openai.com/account/rate-limits to learn more.",
    "type": "tokens",
    "param": null,
    "code": "rate_limit_exceeded"
  },
  "code": "rate_limit_exceeded",
  "param": null,
  "type": "tokens"
}

Is there a recommended approach to access these headers when a 429 error is thrown? Alternatively, is there a way to prevent the SDK from throwing an exception so that I can inspect the full response, including headers?

Right now my best effort way is to parse the error message that looks like

"Rate limit reached for gpt-4.1 in organization [redacted] on tokens per min (TPM): Limit 30000, Used 18271, Requested 16921. Please try again in 10.384s. Visit https://platform.openai.com/account/rate-limits to learn more"

Which is obviously really bad practice. Any guidance on how to handle this scenario effectively would be appreciated.

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