A practical guide to Freshdesk API rate limits

So, you've got a great idea to connect Freshdesk to another tool or build some slick new automations for your support team. You get started, things are looking good, and then you run smack into a wall you didn't even know was there: API rate limits.

It’s a classic story. Your brilliant workflow-improving idea is suddenly stopped dead in its tracks by a technical cap.

These hidden limits can freeze your automations, mess up your data syncing, and give your engineering team a massive headache. Ultimately, they can stop your support operations from growing.

This guide will walk you through what Freshdesk API rate limits actually are, why they can be such a pain, and how you can get around them. We'll look at the typical ways people deal with them and then explore a much simpler, code-free way to sidestep the problem altogether.

What are Freshdesk API rate limits?

In simple terms, an API rate limit is a cap that Freshdesk puts on how many requests your account can make to its system in a given amount of time (usually per minute).

You can think of it as a speed limit for your data. These limits are there for a good reason; they keep the Freshdesk platform stable and ensure everyone gets a fair slice of the pie. Without them, one company running a huge data sync could slow things down for everybody else.

Here’s what that looks like in the real world:

• The limit is account-wide, which means every agent, app, and integration you have is dipping into the same pool of available API calls.

• If you go over your limit, Freshdesk temporarily stops accepting your requests and sends back a "429 Too Many Requests" error. Your app then has to cool its jets and wait for a bit before it can try again.

Freshdesk API rate limits by plan

It’s really important to know that your subscription plan is directly tied to your API rate limit. As your team gets busier and your automation needs get bigger, you might find yourself needing to upgrade just to keep up with the number of API calls you’re making.

Here’s a quick look at the standard rate limits per minute for Freshdesk’s main ticketing APIs, according to their v2 documentation.

Just keep in mind that these are the general limits. Freshdesk also has smaller limits for specific actions (like "List Tickets"). This means you could hit a ceiling for one type of request even if you haven't used up your total allowance for the minute. You can dig into the nitty-gritty details in the official Freshdesk developer documentation.

The business impact of hitting Freshdesk API rate limits

While "API rate limits" sounds like something only developers need to worry about, they can cause real problems for your support operations, your budget, and your customers.

Let's break down what that means.

Your automations stop working

When an integration hits a rate limit, it doesn't just slow down; it stops. This isn't a minor glitch. A crucial ticket update might not make it to Jira. A new customer’s information could fail to sync to your CRM. Your analytics dashboard could suddenly be full of old data. These little failures create a cascade of problems, forcing agents to work with bad information and waste time manually copy-pasting things to fix sync errors.

Your development costs go up

For developers, rate limits mean you can't just build simple integrations. You have to write a ton of extra code just to handle the possibility of being blocked. This often involves:

• Building queues to hold onto requests and trickle them out slowly.

• Implementing "exponential backoff," which is just a fancy way of saying the code has to wait longer and longer between retries after a failure.

• Constantly monitoring for those "429" errors and trying to figure out what went wrong.

All this extra work adds time and money to any custom project. It pulls your engineers away from improving your actual product and has them working on what is essentially defensive plumbing.

You hit a scaling ceiling

As your ticket volume grows, you'll naturally start hitting your API limit more often. And of course, this is most likely to happen during a big spike in customer questions, which is exactly when you need your automations to be working perfectly.

This makes it incredibly tough to build workflows that can handle a high volume of tickets. Want to sync thousands of old tickets to train a new AI model? You’ll probably have to do it in tiny, slow batches that take days. You end up stuck between two bad options: pay for a pricey plan upgrade just for more API calls, or deliberately hold back your own growth.

How to manage and work around Freshdesk API rate limits

Okay, so you get the problem. What can you actually do about it? There are a few common ways to tackle this, each with its own pros and cons.

Strategy 1: Tweak your code to be more efficient

The go-to technical solution is to make your code smarter about how it uses the API. This is the "do more with less" approach.

• Batching requests: Instead of sending one request for one update, you group multiple updates into a single call where possible.

• Using webhooks: This is a big one. Instead of constantly asking Freshdesk "Anything new? Anything new?," you let Freshdesk tell you when something happens.

• Caching data: You can store data that doesn't change often (like agent names or ticket fields) locally in your app instead of fetching it from Freshdesk every single time.

The downside: This all requires a good bit of technical know-how and ongoing maintenance. It helps ease the strain, but it doesn't solve the core problem. You’re still living inside a box, just a slightly bigger one.

Strategy 2: Upgrade your Freshdesk plan

The simplest answer is often just to throw money at the problem. Moving up to a higher Freshdesk plan will give you a higher rate limit. This works, but it can get expensive fast, especially if the only reason you're upgrading is for more API calls. You could end up paying for a bunch of enterprise features you don't even need.

Strategy 3: Use a pre-built AI platform (the smarter way)

Instead of building your own integrations and worrying about all this API complexity, you can use a platform that does all the heavy lifting for you.

An AI copilot drafting a reply within the Freshdesk interface, showcasing how to avoid Freshdesk API rate limits.

• Go live in minutes, not months: You don't need a developer to write a single line of code to manage API calls or handle errors. eesel AI handles the entire integration layer so you can focus on what you actually care about: teaching your AI agent how to help your customers.

• Train on your data without hitting limits: One of the most API-hungry tasks is pulling all your historical ticket data to train an AI. Doing this manually could take days and thousands of API calls. The eesel AI platform is built to do this securely and efficiently behind the scenes, giving your AI agent the full context of your past support conversations from day one, all without you making a single API call.

• Built for scale: Because eesel AI is designed to work with busy help desks, its infrastructure knows how to operate effectively within Freshdesk's rules. This means your automations run smoothly, even when you're having your busiest day of the year.

Move faster than your Freshdesk API rate limits allow

Freshdesk API rate limits are a fact of life when you're building custom integrations. They're there for a reason, but they can also be a real barrier to scaling your support automation, leading to higher development costs and fragile workflows.

But you don’t have to build everything from scratch anymore. Modern platforms are designed to handle this kind of complexity for you, letting you jump right to the good part.

By using a solution like eesel AI, you can skip the engineering headaches and start seeing the benefits of AI-powered support right away. Instead of spending months wrestling with API limits, you can launch a smart AI agent that’s trained on your real support history in just a few minutes.

Ready to automate your Freshdesk support without the API bottlenecks? Get started with eesel AI today.