Quotas and rate limits

Summary#

Three independent limits can stop a run in Metric Vault: the monthly credit quota, an hourly fair-use ceiling of 100 light-tool calls, and a separate monthly allowance for AI Recommendations. They are checked in different ways and produce different messages. This page lists each one, the exact wording you will see, and what unblocks it.

Overview#

The most important thing to understand is that the monthly quota does not gate every tool. Metric Vault splits tools into two groups by their credit cost:

That split is deliberate: it is what makes "unlimited light tools, a set number of premium reports per month" true rather than marketing. Keyword research, SERP work, content tools and the technical audits keep running on a paid plan after your credits are spent. Only the heavier reports stop.

Two consequences follow, and both surprise people:

• Light-tool runs still add to your usage total. They are not blocked by the monthly quota, but their credits are counted, and it is that same total the premium check measures. So your usage figure can legitimately read higher than your quota while light tools carry on. See Tracking your usage.
• The Free plan is a different case. Free carries a zero-credit allowance, so any tool that costs 1 or more is refused outright with an upgrade message rather than a quota message.

For what a credit is and what each tool costs, read How credits work.

The monthly credit quota#

The quota is per account and resets at 00:00 UTC on the 1st of each calendar month. Credits do not roll over. Full plan detail is in Plans and pricing.

What is checked. When you start a report costing 3 or more credits, Metric Vault compares your usage so far this month plus the cost of that run against your quota. If it would go over, the run is refused before any data is fetched and before anything is charged.

What is not checked. Runs costing 0, 1 or 2 credits never consult the monthly quota.

The messages you will see#

If your plan includes no credits at all — the Free plan — a premium run is refused with:

This tool needs a paid plan. Free includes the 10 technical SEO tools; upgrade to Pro to unlock the rest.

If your plan has a credit allowance and you have used all of it:

You've used all 500 premium reports on the PRO plan this month. Light tools (keyword research, SERP, content, technical audits) keep working. Quota resets on September 1, 2026 (in 12 days). Upgrade to continue using premium reports now.

The number, plan name, reset date and countdown are filled in from your account. When the reset is the following day, the countdown reads tomorrow instead of in N days.

There is a third variant, seen only when an account resolves to a plan that carries no credit allowance at all. Support should recognize it, because it usually means the account's plan record is not what the customer expects:

Premium reports aren't included on the <PLAN> plan. Light tools (keyword research, SERP, content, technical audits) stay free. Upgrade to a paid plan to run premium reports.

What unblocks it#

• Wait for the reset on the 1st.
• Upgrade to a plan with a larger allowance. See Upgrading and downgrading.
• Reopen a saved result instead of re-running it. Reopening costs nothing.

The hourly light-tool limit#

Light tools are unmetered monthly, but they are not unlimited per hour. Every account has a fair-use ceiling of 100 light-tool calls per hour, counted in UTC clock hours. It exists to stop automated abuse, not to constrain people: a person working intensively runs a small fraction of that.

When you hit it:

Hourly fair-use limit reached (100 light-tool calls/hour). This protects our infrastructure from abuse while keeping your monthly usage unlimited. Please wait ~14 minutes for the next hourly reset.

The wait figure is the number of minutes left in the current UTC hour, so the ceiling clears on the hour rather than 60 minutes after your first call.

The AI Recommendations allowance#

Get Recommendations — the button that turns any result into a prioritized action plan — has its own gate on top of the credit system. It is checked first, before the credit quota.

Two separate things can therefore stop a recommendation: your plan being below the minimum, and your recommendation allowance for the month being spent.

Below the minimum plan:

AI recommendations are available on the Pro plan and above. Your account is on Free. Upgrade to turn any result into a step-by-step action plan.

Allowance spent:

You've used all 100 AI recommendations on the PRO plan this month. Your quota resets on September 1, 2026 (in 12 days). Upgrade to get more right away.

In the panel itself these appear as a titled state rather than raw text: "Recommendations are a paid feature" with a See plans button, or "You've used your recommendations" with an Upgrade for more button.

Three details worth knowing:

• A recommendation costs both. One click spends 1 recommendation from this allowance and 1 credit from your monthly credit quota.
• Recommendation usage is not shown in the usage indicator. The credit it spends is; the recommendation count is not visible in the product.
• The allowance is counted when the request is accepted, so a recommendation that then fails upstream is not automatically restored. Contact support if that happens. See Contacting support.

The minimum plan and the per-plan allowances are configurable by Metric Vault, so an account may be set differently from the table above by arrangement. More on the feature itself in Get Recommendations.

Other limits that produce a similar message#

Seat detail is in Seats and plan limits; API keys in API keys.

Error codes and status codes#

Support and API users see a machine-readable code alongside each message.

The two 503 codes are temporary. Metric Vault refuses the run rather than guessing your entitlement, so retrying a minute later is the correct response. See 503 and service-unavailable errors.

The full code list across the platform is in Error and status codes.

Limits that are not enforced automatically#

Being straight about this saves a support cycle. Some figures published in the plan comparison are commercial guidance rather than a switch the system throws: monitored competitor URLs, rank alerts, tracked prompts, blog websites, newsletter subscribers, media storage and client workspaces are not automatically capped per plan. Rank alerts do carry a flat ceiling of 200 per account, which is an abuse stop rather than the plan figure. If you are sizing a deployment around one of those numbers, agree it with sales rather than assuming the product will stop you. See Full plan comparison.

The limits that are enforced by the system are exactly the ones on this page, plus team seats, the Enterprise gate on API access, and the Pro gate on white-label branding and scheduled reports.

Screenshots#