Documenso Rate Limits

Overview

Documenso uses a fair-use rate limiting model. There are no published per-minute request quotas -- instead, limits are based on your plan's document allowance and general API fair use. The paid plans (Individual and Team) include unlimited signing and API volume. The free plan has a document limit. If you hit a 429, implement exponential backoff and request queuing.

Prerequisites

• Documenso SDK installed
• Understanding of async/await patterns
• Completed documenso-install-auth setup

Documenso Fair Use Model

Plan	Documents	API Volume	Signing Volume
Free	Limited (per plan)	Fair use	Fair use
Individual ($30/mo)	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Team	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Enterprise	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Self-Hosted	Unlimited	No limits	No limits

Documenso explicitly does not price API usage -- they want developers to build on the platform without API cost concerns. The practical limit is abusive traffic patterns (thousands of requests per second).

Instructions

Step 1: Exponential Backoff with Jitter

// src/documenso/retry.ts
interface RetryConfig {
  maxRetries: number;
  baseDelayMs: number;
  maxDelayMs: number;
}

const DEFAULTS: RetryConfig = { maxRetries: 5, baseDelayMs: 1000, maxDelayMs: 60000 };

export async function withRetry<T>(
  fn: () => Promise<T>,
  config: Partial<RetryConfig> = {}
): Promise<T> {
  const { maxRetries, baseDelayMs, maxDelayMs } = { ...DEFAULTS, ...config };
  let lastError: Error | undefined;

  for (let attempt = 0; attempt <= maxRetries; attempt++) {
    try {
      return await fn();
    } catch (err: any) {
      lastError = err;
      const status = err.statusCode ?? err.status;

      // Don't retry client errors (except 429)
      if (status && status >= 400 && status < 500 && status !== 429) {
        throw err;
      }

      if (attempt === maxRetries) break;

      // Exponential backoff with jitter
      const delay = Math.min(baseDelayMs * 2 ** attempt, maxDelayMs);
      const jitter = delay * (0.5 + Math.random() * 0.5);
      console.warn(`Retry ${attempt + 1}/${maxRetries} in ${Math.round(jitter)}ms (status: ${status})`);
      await new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, jitter));
    }
  }
  throw lastError!;
}

Step 2: Request Queue for Bulk Operations

// src/documenso/queue.ts
import PQueue from "p-queue";

// Limit concurrency to avoid overwhelming the API
const queue = new PQueue({ concurrency: 5, interval: 1000, intervalCap: 10 });

export async function queuedRequest<T>(fn: () => Promise<T>): Promise<T> {
  return queue.add(fn) as Promise<T>;
}

// Usage: bulk document creation
async function createBulkDocuments(
  client: Documenso,
  items: Array<{ title: string; pdfPath: string }>
) {
  const results = await Promise.allSettled(
    items.map((item) =>
      queuedRequest(async () => {
        const doc = await client.documents.createV0({ title: item.title });
        const pdf = readFileSync(item.pdfPath);
        await client.documents.setFileV0(doc.documentId, {
          file: new Blob([pdf], { type: "application/pdf" }),
        });
        return doc;
      })
    )
  );

  const succeeded = results.filter((r) => r.status === "fulfilled").length;
  const failed = results.filter((r) => r.status === "rejected").length;
  console.log(`Bulk create: ${succeeded} succeeded, ${failed} failed`);
  return results;
}

Step 3: Circuit Breaker for Outages

// src/documenso/circuit-breaker.ts
class CircuitBreaker {
  private failures = 0;
  private lastFailure = 0;
  private state: "closed" | "open" | "half-open" = "closed";

  constructor(
    private threshold = 5,         // failures before opening
    private resetTimeMs = 30000    // time before half-open
  ) {}

  async execute<T>(fn: () => Promise<T>): Promise<T> {
    if (this.state === "open") {
      if (Date.now() - this.lastFailure > this.resetTimeMs) {
        this.state = "half-open";
      } else {
        throw new Error("Circuit breaker is open — Documenso API unavailable");
      }
    }

    try {
      const result = await fn();
      this.onSuccess();
      return result;
    } catch (err) {
      this.onFailure();
      throw err;
    }
  }

  private onSuccess() {
    this.failures = 0;
    this.state = "closed";
  }

  private onFailure() {
    this.failures++;
    this.lastFailure = Date.now();
    if (this.failures >= this.threshold) {
      this.state = "open";
      console.error(`Circuit breaker OPEN after ${this.failures} failures`);
    }
  }
}

// Usage
const breaker = new CircuitBreaker();
const doc = await breaker.execute(() => client.documents.findV0({ page: 1, perPage: 10 }));

Step 4: Python Retry

import time, random

def with_retry(fn, max_retries=5, base_delay=1.0):
    for attempt in range(max_retries + 1):
        try:
            return fn()
        except Exception as e:
            status = getattr(e, "status_code", None)
            if status and 400 <= status < 500 and status != 429:
                raise
            if attempt == max_retries:
                raise
            delay = min(base_delay * (2 ** attempt), 60)
            jitter = delay * (0.5 + random.random() * 0.5)
            print(f"Retry {attempt + 1}/{max_retries} in {jitter:.1f}s")
            time.sleep(jitter)

# Usage
docs = with_retry(lambda: client.documents.find_v0(page=1, per_page=10))

Error Handling

Scenario	Response Code	Action
Rate limited	429	Exponential backoff with jitter
Server error	500/502/503	Retry up to 5 times
Documenso outage	Persistent 5xx	Circuit breaker, degrade gracefully
Auth error	401/403	Do NOT retry -- fix credentials

Resources

• Documenso Fair Use Policy
• Documenso Pricing
• p-queue Documentation

Next Steps

For security configuration, see documenso-security-basics.