The ScaleGrowth API is designed for flexibility and scalability across different use cases. While we don’t currently impose hard rate limits, proper API design is essential to ensure smooth performance – especially on ScaleGrowth Plans that operate on Shared Hosting.
This guide explains how rate limits apply (or don’t), the two supported API modes, and best practices to avoid unintended performance issues.
Synchronous vs Asynchronous API Modes
ScaleGrowth supports two modes for API access:
1. Synchronous Mode
In this mode, your API client can only process one active request at a time. If you try to issue parallel requests, the API will return an error explaining that another request is already in progress and suggest switching to Asynchronous mode.
This behavior ensures fast & consistent performance for smaller or sequential tasks as well as API integration testing, but limits throughput.
2. Asynchronous Mode
Asynchronous mode is built for scale. You can issue requests in parallel. Instead of returning the full result immediately, each call instantly returns an Api Call ID, and the full response is later delivered to a registered Callback URL (typically a Webhook handler like endpoint). To learn more, check out this guide:
This model supports parallel and non-blocking workflows. However, under the hood, ScaleGrowth may serialize requests depending on system load and traffic conditions – particularly on our default Shared Cloud Hosting infrastructure. While many requests may be accepted in parallel, their actual execution may be queued to maintain system stability.
Rate Limits on the Asynchronous API
Currently, there are no hard rate limits on Asynchronous API usage. You are free to issue requests in parallel as you see fit.
That said, we strongly encourage good API hygiene. Poorly optimized usage patterns can have severe unintended consequences – not for the broader platform, but for your own application.
Why?
With ScaleGrowth’s Shared Cloud Hosting your APIs and your main application share infrastructure. If your system makes inefficient API calls at scale, the impact will first and foremost be felt in your own app’s performance – slower response times, delayed user actions, and poor end-user experience.
This architectural choice is intentional: it allows us to avoid rate-limiting even at the very affordable price points of our Shared Cloud Hosting – while naturally encouraging scalable and efficient API design.
Important Policy Disclaimer
If your integration unintentionally places excessive strain on the system due to inefficient or high-frequency API design patterns – e.g., frequent polling, excessive parallel requests, or unnecessary full-database fetches – ScaleGrowth reserves the right to introduce rate limits or throttling for your Platform’s API clients on Shared Cloud Hosting to preserve overall system stability.
This is not something we enforce by default, and we always aim to work collaboratively with you first. ScaleGrowth also reserves the right to modify the API rate limiting policy for our Shared Cloud Hosting at any time in the future.
On the other hand, with our Dedicated Cloud Hosting option, you will never be rate-limited, and we can always right-size the infrastructure to meet your usage needs.
Best Practices for API Usage
To ensure performance and reliability as your system scales, we recommend the following:
1. Don’t Poll for Everything
While you can fetch your entire database on a schedule, this is rarely optimal. Repeated full pulls will create unnecessary strain and slow down your application.
2. Use Webhooks for Change Detection
The best practice is to use Webhook Events to get notified when data changes. This way, you only fetch records when needed, based on actual activity. For example:
- When a member or listing is created or updated
- When a user takes a key action
This event-driven model keeps your integration light, fast, and cost-efficient.
3. Use List Endpoints with Pagination
When you do need to perform a full sync, use our list GET endpoints without specifying IDs – such as /api/v1/members/ – that paginate the results instead of issuing lots of individual object GETs.
Pagination supports adjustable page size. You can retrieve 100, 500, or even 1000 records per page, depending on your needs. This helps avoid timeouts, keeps your application stable, and plays nicely with parallel processing if needed. Our team can help find the page size that strikes the right balance of individual page load time vs the number of requests you need.
Please reach out with a description of your use case under Ask SG Team in your Success Center and we are here to help!
4. Be Mindful of Serialization in Shared Hosting
While async API calls can be fired in parallel, behind the scenes ScaleGrowth may queue them depending on overall platform traffic and available resources. This is most relevant on our Shared Cloud Hosting, which most customers default on.
If you overload the system with many simultaneous calls, you may see longer callback times as the requests get serialized. And with poor API design, it is possible to essentially perform an equivalent of a Denial Of Service (DoS) attack against your own application. So we strongly recommend following the API best practices such as Webhook Event driven update retrievals instead.
High-Volume API Use Cases: Consider Dedicated Hosting
If your application architecture or growth plans involve high-frequency, high-volume API usage, you may want to explore our Dedicated Cloud Hosting tier.
With Dedicated Hosting, our team will set up and manage a fully isolated instance of ScaleGrowth on AWS just for you. This includes:
- Your own database, API stack, and application backend
- Configurable API workers
- No shared traffic or infrastructure contention
This setup is ideal if you're scaling significantly, need enterprise-grade performance, or want to eliminate potential bottlenecks entirely.
Unlike Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting guarantees zero rate limits and full resource isolation. Our team can scale it vertically or horizontally to support even the most demanding workloads.
To learn more, check out Dedicated Cloud Hosting with ScaleGrowth.
In Summary
- No hard rate limits are in place for asynchronous API calls by default.
- Inefficient usage may significantly degrade performance – for your own ScaleGrowth application – on Shared Cloud Hosting.
- Best practice is to use Webhooks Events and Pagination for scalable, event-driven integrations.
- Avoid excessive loop-based or timer-based polling, especially for larger member databases or content Spaces.
- Consider Dedicated Cloud Hosting as your app or data needs grow.
We’re always here to help with API integration strategy and performance planning. Reach out anytime if you'd like to review your API approach by describing your desired use case under Ask SG Team in your Success Center.
