API unstability lately?

I have used comicvine API for years without problems, but since a week ago it has been working rarely unstable. Is it just me or a general thing?

It isn't just you. They started enforcing the rate limit of 200 requests per hour per resource. i.e. you could do 200 issues and 200 volumes in one hour. So it has been stable, but depending on how you are using it it looks like it isn't available, because you hit your limit for an hour.

You can see your requests and your reset time at: https://comicvine.gamespot.com/api/

It isn't clear if this is a permanent change or not. That dashboard will still state" Your request rate is fine" even though you are actively being rate limited, so maybe the change is just temporary? we can hope...

They have always stated that they only support 200 per hour, but it was never enforced. So perhaps we have just been very luck all these years.

If your app is doing a every 2 seconds, you would hit your limit in 7 minutes, and then you have to wait another 53 minutes to use it again.

I understand they aren't able to give unlimited resources for free, but it has really made it difficult to use these past couple of weeks. As an example say you want to tag a series like Detective Comics. It now takes you 4.5 hours.

Since this is such a new and drastic change I assume a lot of the apps aren't handling this well as there was always an assumption you would get results back, outside of the occasional service outage.

Yeah, 200 request per resource per hour makes any sort of batch scraping a super painful process. I really wish they'd offer a paid option for more/unlimited API access. I'd happily pay $10 a month to not have to deal with these restrictions. And unfortunately there's no other good comic metadata APIs to move to either, so we're pretty much stuck with whatever restrictions they decided to impose.

I'm trying to tag a little over 400 comics, and it is taking a while due to the rate limit. Despite the site saying I am not rate limited. This is a pain now

Even the website stops working for me, they are blocking IPs too for a brief time after searches. My apps show CV down but then I go from a VPN and get in fine and my API info shows this:

You have used 2 requests in the last hour for API Path '/volumes' (reset in 53 minutes)
You have used 2 requests in the last hour for API Path '/volume' (reset in 53 minutes)
You have used 2 requests in the last hour for API Path '/issues' (reset in 53 minutes)
Your request rate is fine

Site and API is unusable and unstable now, been trying to complete a set of less than 400 for weeks with correct tags and it seems it'll be faster to just google it and copy in the info by hand. Well it was good when it lasted!!!