Loop budget
Budget the heavy loop first
History, order flow, and deep-book pulls move the bill. Price those first.
Limits & Throughput
Credits, plan gates, and rate limits set the real operating cost of an integration.
Endpoint cost map
Route cost is uneven. Price the expensive calls first.
- Low-cost routes
- Freshness, instruments, current state
- Heavy routes
- History, order flow, L3/L4 depth
- WebSocket
- 1 credit per message
| Endpoint | Scope | Credits |
|---|---|---|
GET /v1/*/instruments, /*/current, /*/freshness/:symbol | Hyperliquid | 1 |
GET /v1/hyperliquid/orderbook/:symbol | Hyperliquid | 1 |
GET /v1/lighter/orderbook/:symbol | Lighter.xyz | 2 |
GET /v1/hyperliquid/hip3/orderbook/:symbol (Pro+) | HIP-3 | 1 |
GET /v1/hyperliquid/orderbook/:symbol/history | Hyperliquid | 5 |
GET /v1/hyperliquid/hip3/orderbook/:symbol/history (Pro+) | HIP-3 | 5 |
GET /v1/lighter/orderbook/:symbol/history | Lighter.xyz | 10 |
GET /v1/*/trades/:symbol | Hyperliquid | 2 |
GET /v1/*/funding/:symbol | Hyperliquid | 2 |
GET /v1/*/openinterest/:symbol | Hyperliquid | 2 |
GET /v1/*/summary/:symbol | Hyperliquid | 2 |
GET /v1/*/prices/:symbol | Hyperliquid | 2 |
GET /v1/*/candles/:symbol | Hyperliquid | 3 |
GET /v1/hyperliquid/liquidations/:symbol | Hyperliquid | 3 |
GET /v1/hyperliquid/liquidations/:symbol/volume | Hyperliquid | 3 |
GET /v1/*/orders/:symbol/history (Pro+) | Hyperliquid | 3 |
GET /v1/*/orders/:symbol/flow (Pro+) | Hyperliquid | 5 |
GET /v1/*/orders/:symbol/tpsl (Pro+) | Hyperliquid | 3 |
GET /v1/*/orderbook/:symbol/l4 (Pro+) | Hyperliquid | 10 |
GET /v1/*/orderbook/:symbol/l4/diffs (Pro+) | Hyperliquid | 3 |
GET /v1/*/orderbook/:symbol/l4/history (Build+) | Hyperliquid | 3 |
GET /v1/lighter/l3orderbook/:symbol (Pro+) | Lighter.xyz | 5 |
GET /v1/lighter/l3orderbook/:symbol/history (Pro+) | Lighter.xyz | 10 |
GET /v1/data-quality/coverage/:exchange/:symbol | Data Quality | 5 |
GET /v1/data-quality/* (other) | Data Quality | 1 |
WebSocket message | WebSocket | 1 |
Budgeting rules
History, order flow, and deep-book pulls dominate spend.
Venue premium
Treat Lighter history as its own line item
Lighter order book history costs 10 credits per request, so it should not share the same budget model as Hyperliquid.
Reality check
Model the mix on paper
A loop with 1,000 order books and 500 history pulls is already 3,500 credits. Do the math first.
Where the budget changes
These are the venue-specific details that move cost the most.
Lighter.xyz
High detail, higher credit cost
Checkpoint-to-tick reconstruction stays plan-gated, and order book history remains the expensive outlier.
HIP-3
Builder-perp breadth is plan-gated
Free still includes km:US500. Build+ opens the wider builder-perp family under the Hyperliquid namespace.
WebSocket
Streaming is usually cheaper than polling
Messages bill at 1 credit each, so live transport often beats frequent REST polling.
What to confirm after pricing
After pricing, lock rate limits and response shapes.
What stays free
Free is narrow, but not empty.
REST coverage
BTC and km:US500 stay available
You keep the core REST routes for BTC on Hyperliquid and km:US500 on HIP-3 after the trial ends.
Diagnostics
Freshness and data-quality routes stay on
Status, coverage, incidents, latency, SLA, summary, and cursor pagination remain available on Free.
Tooling
The full toolchain still works
SDKs, the CLI, MCP, and the Claude Code skill stay available even on the narrow free plan.
What is excluded
These are the limits that usually push a project onto a paid plan.
Transport
No WebSocket or replay on Free
Free is REST-only. Paid plans add live streams and replay.
Depth
No L4, L3, or wider Lighter detail
Deep order book routes and finer Lighter reconstruction stay behind paid plans.
Breadth
Coverage stays intentionally narrow
Anything beyond BTC and km:US500 needs a paid plan, and bulk export is not included.
What Free is for
Free works for narrow prototypes and diagnostics. It is not a broad market-data plan.
- Credits
- 10M monthly
- Coverage
- BTC + km:US500
- Trial path
- 14-day Build at signup
| Feature | Free plan |
|---|---|
| Monthly Credits | 10,000,000 |
| Rate Limit | 15 requests/sec |
| Concurrent Queries | 3 in-flight |
| Symbols | BTC (Hyperliquid) + km:US500 (HIP-3) |
| Historical Depth | 30 days |
| Per-Request Range | 30 days max |
| Orderbook Depth | 20 levels per side |
| WebSocket | Not included |
| Bulk Export | Not included |
| L4 / L3 Orderbook | Not included |
| Lighter Granularity | Not included |
When to upgrade
Upgrade when coverage, depth, or transport becomes the bottleneck.
More symbols
Broader market coverage
Upgrade when the job extends past BTC or km:US500.
Live transport
Streams or replay
WebSocket and replay are the cleanest upgrade trigger for most live systems.
More depth
Wider history or deeper books
Upgrade when 30 days, 20 levels, or the free symbol set is no longer enough.
Need broader coverage? Start the Build trial or compare plans on pricing.
Tier matrix
Design for request rate and in-flight ceilings. The API does not queue overflow work.
- Requests / sec
- Per API key
- Concurrent
- Hard cap per key
- Budget
- Monthly credits still apply
| Tier | Requests / sec | Concurrent | Monthly credits | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 15 | 3 | 10,000,000 | BTC + km:US500 |
| Build | 50 | 10 | 80,000,000 | All |
| Pro | 150 | 20 | 400,000,000 | All |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Unlimited | All |
Concurrency rules
Read the headers and the in-flight cap together.
Per-second budget
Watch X-RateLimit-Remaining
Use it to see next-second headroom instead of learning by 429.
Monthly budget
Watch X-Credits-Remaining
The monthly credit ceiling still applies even when the per-second window looks healthy.
Recovery and backoff
Use reset headers and bounded retries.
Per-second reset
Read X-RateLimit-Reset
Wait for the next second window instead of blind retries.
Monthly reset
Read X-Credits-Reset
Read the reset timestamp to decide whether the key can recover in time.
Queue control
Do not stack retries behind one exhausted key
If the key is exhausted, shed load or switch keys. Unbounded retries only add noise.
Client rules
Simple client-side controls beat a pile of 429s.
Monitor response headers
Every response includes X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-Credits-Remaining. Use them instead of waiting for a 429.
Limit concurrent requests
The in-flight cap is client-side work too. Use a semaphore or pool so the server never sees an avoidable burst.
Use cursor pagination
Follow next_cursor instead of splitting history into many small windows. It is cheaper and easier to reason about.
Cache slow-changing routes
Instruments and freshness are 1-credit routes. Cache them for a few minutes instead of refetching on every pass.
Use aggregation intervals
For funding, open interest, and price history, ask for 1h, 4h, or 1d aggregates when raw rows are not required.
Prefer WebSocket for live loops
A live subscription often replaces hundreds of REST calls per minute and keeps your request budget cleaner.
Back off on 429
Read the reset headers and retry later. Immediate retries on an exhausted key just waste time.