Amazon PA API Throttling: Why It Happens and How to Fix It

If your Product Advertising API calls return TooManyRequests, you're being throttled. It's the most common PA API problem, especially for newer affiliates — and it's mostly by design.

How Amazon sets your limit

Every account starts with one request per second and 8,640 requests per day. From there, your limit scales with the shipped-item revenue your affiliate links drive: roughly one extra request per day for every five cents of revenue over the last 30 days. Drive no sales, and your quota stays at the floor — or drops back to it. Amazon documents this in their API rates guide.

Why you can see errors and working searches at once

Tools that check your keys often fire several requests in a burst (one per Amazon locale you've configured). A burst can trip the per-second limit even when your steady usage is fine — so a settings page can show throttling errors while normal searches still work.

What actually fixes it

1. Drive sales. The only durable fix: more shipped revenue raises the quota automatically within about a day.
2. Cache aggressively. Tools like Table Labs cache product data and refresh on a schedule instead of hitting the API on every page view — a single blog post embed generates zero PA API calls from your visitors.
3. Create some links manually while your quota is low, and switch back to API-powered tables once sales lift your limits.

What doesn't fix it

New keys on the same associate account inherit the same limits, and retry storms make bursts worse. Don't bother.