Should I retry Anthropic 429 rate_limit_error?

Yes, with exponential backoff and jitter. Read the retry-after header and wait that long before retrying. If there is no retry-after, check whether you hit the monthly spend cap in the Console.

AI API errors / Anthropic (Claude)

Anthropic (Claude) · HTTP 429 · checked Oct 24, 2026

Anthropic 429 rate_limit_error: what it means and how to fix it

Retry: yes, with backoff

429 rate_limit_error

What it meansYour organization went over a rate limit (requests, input tokens or output tokens per minute), or hit its usage tier's monthly spend cap. Rate-limit 429s come with a retry-after header; a spend-cap 429 has none and keeps failing until access resumes.

How to fix it

Read the retry-after header and wait that long before retrying. If there is no retry-after, check whether you hit the monthly spend cap in the Console.
Cut tokens per minute: cache repeated prompt prefixes with prompt caching (cached input does not count the same way), trim history, and lower max_tokens to what you need.
Spread load: a queue with a fixed concurrency beats bursts.
Move up a usage tier (limits rise with spend) or use the Batch API for bulk work.

Is it down right now?

Check our live status page or the official one.

Retry it properly

import anthropic

# The SDK retries 429, 5xx and connection errors with exponential backoff and honors retry-after.
client = anthropic.Anthropic(max_retries=6)

try:
    msg = client.messages.create(model="claude-sonnet-5-5", max_tokens=1024,
                                 messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}])
except anthropic.RateLimitError as e:      # 429 after all retries
    print("still rate limited", e.response.headers.get("retry-after"))
except anthropic.APIStatusError as e:      # 529 overloaded, 500, 504...
    print(e.status_code, e.response.headers.get("request-id"))

The official SDKs already retry connection errors, 429 and 5xx twice with exponential backoff and honor retry-after; raise max_retries for batch jobs.

Same kind of error at other providers

Other Anthropic (Claude) errors

Source

Anthropic (Claude) error documentation: platform.claude.com/docs/en/api/errors (checked Oct 24, 2026)

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