Daily Message Limits

Every plan comes with a number of messages per day. The count resets at 00:00 UTC. Once you reach the limit, new messages are rejected with 429 Too Many Requests until the reset — they are not stored and no push is sent.

Limits by plan

Plan	Messages per day
Free	50
Starter	1,000
Medium	5,000
Large	Unlimited

Your current plan and today's usage are on the Billing page, and available over the API from GET /v1/messages/usage.

What counts

Every message created on your account counts once, on the UTC day it was created:

• API requests — POST /v1/messages, including requests with an attachment.
• Webhook calls — each call that produces a message.
• Scheduled messages — counted on the day you schedule them, not the day they are delivered. A message scheduled today for next Tuesday uses today's quota; delivery itself never consumes quota and is never blocked by it.

What does not count:

• Requests that fail validation (400, 403) or fail on our side (500) — the quota is refunded.
• Rejected requests themselves. They are tallied separately as rejected so you can see what you missed.

Deleting messages does not free up quota

The counter tracks messages sent, not messages stored. Deleting messages — one by one or all at once — does not give today's quota back.

When the limit is reached

The API answers 429 Too Many Requests with a Retry-After header holding the number of seconds until the reset:

HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Retry-After: 30142
X-PA-Daily-Limit: 50
X-PA-Daily-Remaining: 0
X-PA-Daily-Reset: 1790035200

{
  "error": "Daily message limit reached (50/50). New messages are rejected until 00:00 UTC. Upgrade your plan to raise the limit.",
  "limit": 50,
  "used": 50,
  "resets_at": "2026-09-22T00:00:00Z",
  "upgrade_url": "https://pocketalert.app/pricing"
}

Handling 429 in your integration

Treat 429 as "not now", not as a transient failure. Retrying before Retry-After elapses gets the same answer — every retry is rejected and counted. Either wait until resets_at, or drop the alert and log it.

Webhooks

Webhook calls over the limit are refused with the same 429, but each one is still recorded in the webhook's history with its full payload and the message it would have produced. The entry has status: "error" and error_code: "daily_limit", so nothing disappears without a trace — open the history to see what arrived while you were over the limit.

Rate-limit headers

Every successful POST /v1/messages (and every webhook call that creates a message) carries the current quota:

Header	Meaning
X-PA-Daily-Limit	Messages allowed per day on your plan
X-PA-Daily-Remaining	Messages left today, after this one
X-PA-Daily-Reset	Unix timestamp (seconds) of the next reset, 00:00 UTC

Unlimited plans don't get these headers.

Emails

Pocket Alert emails the account owner twice at most per day:

• At 80% of the daily limit — a heads-up while there is still room.
• On the first rejected message — the limit is reached and new messages are being refused.

Unlimited plans never get these emails.

Upgrading

A new plan applies immediately: once the upgrade goes through, the next request is checked against the new limit — no need to wait for the reset. See pricing.

Related

• Create Message — the 429 response in context
• Message usage — today's usage over the API
• Webhook history — where rejected webhook calls are kept
• Scheduled delivery — how scheduled messages are counted