Retrying Third-Party APIs the Right Way: Honor the Headers

Fri, 22 May 2026 10:00:00 +0530

You call a third-party API. It hands you back a 429 Too Many Requests. What do you do?

If your reflex is “wait a second, then two, then four, then hope” — same. That was my reflex too. Exponential backoff is the pattern everyone reaches for, it’s in every resilience blog post, and it feels responsible. It’s also, in a lot of cases, just guessing. The API you’re hammering usually tells you exactly how long to wait. You’re choosing to ignore it and roll dice instead.

Api on Kuldeep Pisda

Retrying Third-Party APIs the Right Way: Honor the Headers