---
schema_version: "1"
id: a36a7b2551ba16c52f927e53de372bd501223755581d87368f26123813d91534
title: Rate Limiting
collection: developer
version: current
locale: en-us
portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/developer/current/en-us/marketing-cloud/guides/mc-apis/rate-limiting.md
canonical_url: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/marketing/marketing-cloud/guide/rate-limiting.html
source_site: developer.salesforce.com
content_type: documentation
content_hash: 56d55ffb5397fe9e863863ec836ea1c26614227e76be14e61e366a57987bbbb3
products:
  - Marketing Cloud Engagement APIs and Programmatic Languages
  - Marketing Cloud
---
# Rate Limiting

If API calls from an account negatively impact system performance, Marketing Cloud Engagement temporarily throttles subsequent SOAP API calls from that account. The throttling rate is variable depending on the severity of the impact.

If your account is throttled, API requests produce HTTP 500 error messages until the issue is resolved. You can contact your Account Executive for more information about the issues that are causing your requests to be throttled.

## Sample HTTP 500 Error Payload

```xml
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:wsa="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">
   <soap:Header>
      <wsa:Action>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing/fault</wsa:Action>
      <wsa:MessageID>urn:uuid:83defa1b-6802-439f-8a46-5331e0d23a4b</wsa:MessageID>
      <wsa:RelatesTo>urn:uuid:89a37da3-3bc0-41e7-9212-06bb4a0cf85f</wsa:RelatesTo>
      <wsa:To>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing/role/anonymous</wsa:To>
      <wsse:Security>
         <wsu:Timestamp wsu:Id="Timestamp-4f0e9ddd-3041-41d7-bd72-26a67008b0b7">
            <wsu:Created>2017-02-01T19:07:24Z</wsu:Created>
            <wsu:Expires>2017-02-01T19:12:24Z</wsu:Expires>
         </wsu:Timestamp>
      </wsse:Security>
   </soap:Header>
   <soap:Body>
      <soap:Fault>
         <faultcode>soap:Server</faultcode>
         <faultstring>Rate Limited</faultstring>
         <faultactor>https://webservice.s1.qa1.exacttarget.com/Service.asmx</faultactor>
         <detail>
            <apifault xmlns="urn:fault.partner.exacttarget.com">
               <Code>17</Code>
               <Message>Rate Limited</Message>
            </apifault>
         </detail>
      </soap:Fault>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

```