Your request failed. The status code said 429. So you slept sixty seconds. Then it failed again.

What did that 429 actually tell you? On its own, almost nothing. A status code is a complaint, not a diagnosis.

I keep reading the same four claims in free-tier threads. Let's test each one, then replace the guessing with a script you can run.

Myth 1: "429 means I sent too many requests per second"

A 429 means "refused right now". The reason lives in headers and body, not in the number. Rate limits, concurrency caps, exhausted quota windows, and shared keys all return 429.

Here's what to actually check, in order:

Retry-After present? The server is telling you when. Obey it.

x-ratelimit-remaining: 0 ? You hit a quota window, not a burst limit. Sleeping one second won't help.

Different key, same failure? The limit is per-account or per-IP, not per-request.

Identical timing on every retry?…