How does the Twitter rate limit API work with multiple accounts?
- by dfrankow
I know there's a Rest API to check the Twitter rate limit.
To summarize policy: 150 for an IP, and 150 per non-whitelisted account except for searches (which are IP only).
However, my app is using Twython, authenticated, but the limit seems to decrease for both my accounts as I use it. Example:
No authentication:
$ wget http://api.twitter.com/1/account/rate_limit_status.xml -O -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<hash>
<hourly-limit type="integer">150</hourly-limit>
<reset-time-in-seconds type="integer">1266968961</reset-time-in-seconds>
<reset-time type="datetime">2010-02-23T23:49:21+00:00</reset-time>
<remaining-hits type="integer">134</remaining-hits>
</hash>
Authentication with account #1:
$ wget --user b... --password=youwish http://api.twitter.com/1/account/rate_limit_status.xml -O -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<hash>
<reset-time-in-seconds type="integer">1266968961</reset-time-in-seconds>
<reset-time type="datetime">2010-02-23T23:49:21+00:00</reset-time>
<remaining-hits type="integer">134</remaining-hits>
<hourly-limit type="integer">150</hourly-limit>
</hash>
Authentication with account #2:
$ wget --user d... --password=youwish http://api.twitter.com/1/account/rate_limit_status.xml -O -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<hash>
<reset-time type="datetime">2010-02-23T23:49:21+00:00</reset-time>
<remaining-hits type="integer">134</remaining-hits>
<hourly-limit type="integer">150</hourly-limit>
<reset-time-in-seconds type="integer">1266968961</reset-time-in-seconds>
</hash>
You see how both accounts seem to have exactly the same rate limit info (134/150)? I only used one account in my app, so why do both accounts show decrease?
