Stripe Error rate_limit: Rate limit exceeded

Identify: does your log match?

{
  "error": {
    "code": "rate_limit",
    "doc_url": "https://stripe.com/docs/error-codes/rate-limit",
    "message": "Request rate limit exceeded. Learn more about rate limits here https://stripe.com/docs/rate-limits.",
    "type": "invalid_request_error"
  }
}

1. High

   Bulk jobs without concurrency limits

   Backfills or migrations fire thousands of requests via Promise.all, spiking above the per-second limit.

2. Medium

   Polling instead of webhooks

   Retrieving PaymentIntents or Subscriptions every few seconds to detect status changes burns the read budget.

3. Medium

   Test mode has lower limits

   Load tests in test mode hit the 25 ops/s limit much sooner than production would.

Fix

const stripe = new Stripe(process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY);

const stripe = new Stripe(process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, {
  maxNetworkRetries: 3,   // exponential backoff on 429, 409 lock_timeout and network errors
  timeout: 20000,
});

Verify: reproduce it on purpose

$ for i in $(seq 1 300); do curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" https://api.stripe.com/v1/customers?limit=1 -u "$STRIPE_SECRET_KEY:" & done | sort | uniq -c

Prevent

• Prefer webhooks over polling for state changes.
• Use auto-pagination (for await) instead of parallel page fetches.
• Run load tests against stripe-mock, not test mode.