Diagnose OpenAI 429 rate limits and exhausted credits

Steps

1. For request rate limits, reduce concurrency and follow Retry-After when provided. Use bounded retry backoff rather than an immediate retry loop.
2. credit_balance_exhausted requires adding credits. organization_spend_limit_exceeded and project_spend_limit_exceeded require resolving the applicable spend limit; waiting alone does not fix them.

Example

Python · Python API examples require OPENAI_API_KEY and OPENAI_MODEL in your server environment. API calls may incur OpenAI charges.

# In an HTTP error handler, inspect sanitized error metadata.
def classify_429(error_code):
    if error_code in {"credit_balance_exhausted",
                      "organization_spend_limit_exceeded",
                      "project_spend_limit_exceeded"}:
        return "Resolve billing or spending configuration"
    return "Inspect error type/message and retry headers before retrying"

Check the result

Keep retries finite and investigate unknown codes. A 429 status alone is insufficient to choose a remedy.

Official source

OpenAI API error codes

Check current provider documentation and model support before deployment. This guide is separate from the approved evidence records listed in the catalog.