Fixing 429 "Too Many Requests" errors

429 Too Many Requests means one visitor, IP address or program sent too many requests in a short time, so the server slowed them down. This protects your website from bots, login attacks and overload.

If you see it while working on your site

The limit usually lifts by itself within a few minutes. Common causes:

• Logging in many times, or a password manager trying an old password over and over.
• Page builders and editors that save automatically and very often.
• Uploading or importing many files at once, for example a big media library.
• Several people in one office working on the site from the same internet connection.

Wait a few minutes, then try again more slowly. If it keeps happening, open a support ticket with your IP address (search “what is my IP”) and the time it happened.

If your visitors or tools see it

• Bots and scrapers crawling your site very fast. Check cPanel’s Awstats or Visitors for unusual traffic, and block bad bots with Cloudflare or a security plugin.
• Uptime monitors or scripts checking your site every few seconds. Set them to check every 1–5 minutes.
• An app or API calling your site in a loop, such as a broken cron job or webhook. Find and fix the script.
• Your own plugins calling your site. For example wp-cron.php or admin-ajax.php running on every page view. Use caching, and replace WordPress’s built-in cron with a real cron job.

The error comes from another service

A 429 error can also come from Cloudflare, or from a service your site connects to (a payment gateway, Google, or an email API). Check where the error page comes from: a Cloudflare page has the Cloudflare logo and a Ray ID. In that case, check your Cloudflare rate limiting rules, or the other service’s usage limits.

Related articles

• Fixing 503 and 508 errors
• Fixing 403 Forbidden errors