Kaizen #93: Credit Calculation and Concurrency in Zoho CRM APIs

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Kaizen! This week, we will discuss credit calculation and concurrency in Zoho CRM APIs.

Credit calculation

      API rate limiting is crucial to ensure fair resource distribution, maintain optimal service quality for all users, and safeguard our system from potential security threats. It helps us provide a consistent, reliable, and secure service to every user, while encouraging efficient and thoughtful API usage. API Usage in a CRM organization is calculated based on credits. When you make an API call, a specific number of credits are deducted from the total number of credits available to you. The number of credits available to you differs depending on the edition and user licence purchased. Below table shows the same.

Edition	Allowed Credits	Maximum Credits
Free Edition	5000 credits	5000 credits
Standard/Starter Edition	50,000 credits + (Number of User licenses x 250) + Add-on credits	100,000 credits
Professional	50,000 credits + (Number of User licenses x 500) + Add-on credits	1,000,000 credits
Enterprise/Zoho One	50,000 credits + (Number of User licenses x 1000) + Add-on credits	2,000,000 credits
Ultimate/CRM Plus	50,000 credits + (Number of User licenses x 2000) + Add-on credits	Unlimited

 If you think you will need more API credits in addition to the daily allowed limit, you can purchase additional credits.

       The API Rate Limit is for a rolling window of 24 hours i.e., for every API call, we will check the API credits consumed in the last 24 hours  to see whether the current API call can be allowed or not. When you make the very first API call , a 24 hour window begins. The API credits you used at each time interval will be freed up after 24 hours corresponding to each time interval.

      Consider the above example where we assume that you are making API calls starting from 9 AM. The total available credits are 5000. For simplicity, let us consider that there are no API calls made on the previous day and no additional credits were purchased.

      Between 9:00 AM and 9:05 AM on day 1,  you use up 100 credits and you are left with 4900 credits . Since no API calls were made the previous day, you have no API credits getting freed up at that time. Between 9:05 AM and 9:10 AM, you use up 150 credits, leaving you with 4750  credits. Let us assume that you exhausted your available limit by 8.45 AM the next day. 

  

      At 9 AM on day 2, 100 API credits used on the previous day (day 1) will be freed up. Similarly, at 9:05 AM on day 2 ,  150 credits will be freed. In this case API calls between 8:45 AM and 9 AM will result in system errors.  

      Let us consider the same scenario if you had purchased add-on credits. After you exhaust your available limit by 8:45 AM on day 2, the credits for further API calls will be considered from the purchased add-on credits. At 9 AM, when the 100 API credits used on the previous day are freed up they are available for your use instead of add-on credits.

Concurrency 

In addition to 24 hour rolling window throttler, Zoho CRM has concurrency limit being applied for APIs. It will limit the no of parallel API calls being active at one time instance. Concurrency limit is checked per org per OAuth app. Concurrency limit differs based on your Zoho CRM edition.

Edition	Concurrency limit for an Org/App
Free	5
Standard/Starter	10
Professional	15
Enterprise/Zoho One	20
Ultimate/CRM Plus	25

Let's assume your organization has a concurrency limit set at 10. A sequence of API calls are made one after another. When all these API calls are still in process with each API call you make, the number of concurrent API calls increases incrementally. Initially, when you make the first API call, concurrency is 1. For the second API call made before the end of the first API call, concurrency becomes 2, and so on. This scenario is shown in the picture above. Once you reach the 10th API call, concurrency reaches its maximum limit of 10. As a result, the 11th API call fails.

However, let's assume that the 5th API call completes its process, thereby reducing the concurrency level to 9. In this state, the 12th API call can be made successfully without encountering any errors.

Sub-concurrency

Some APIs will take much more computing resources than other APIs. For example, an Insert Records API call for a 1000 records will take much more resources than a Get Leads API call for a particular lead id.

For such APIs, we'll apply a separate concurrency limit namely sub-concurrency limit to ensure that the APIs are being used responsibly. The APIs that will falls under the sub-concurrency limit are

• Get Records with cvid or sort_by parameters
• Convert Lead
• Insert, Update, or Upsert records (when the record count is greater than 10)
• Send Mail
• Search records API invoked from function
• Query API
• Composite API

Across all editions of Zoho CRM, the sub-concurrency limit is set as 10. You can make 10 concurrent requests for a combination of the above listed APIs or 10 concurrent requests of one of the APIs. However, if the total number of sub-concurrent requests exceeds 10, the system will generate a "TOO_MANY_REQUESTS" error.

Let's understand how concurrency and sub-concurrency apply together to your API calls. Assume that in your organization, the concurrency limit is set at 12 and sub-concurrency limit is set at 10. 

We'll consider a case where send mail API call has been fired in parallel 11 times, for which the sub-concurrency is applicable. For the first 10 send mail API calls, there won't be any error and sub-concurrency limit will reach it's maximum allowed limit of 10. When the 11th API call is made, the error "TOO_MANY_REQUESTS"  will be thrown even though the concurrency limit of 12 has not reached .

Now, let's consider the 12th API call, doesn't fall under the category of API calls subject to the sub-concurrency limit, say it is a normal GET records call with just fields & ids parameter. This call goes through successfully without encountering any errors. Similarly, the 13th API call, a GET user API call, also goes through. At this point, the concurrency is 12, and the concurrency limit is set at 12 as well.  The 14th API call will result in an error because the concurrency limit exceeded.  In short, the number of API calls allowed at a time depends on the concurrency limit and sub-concurrency limit. 

We hope you found this post useful and it increased your understanding.  Stay tuned for more.

Cheers!

Mable

• Topic Participants

• Mable Mary M P

  

• David

  

• Praveen Sankar

  

• Sticky Posts

• Kaizen #197: Frequently Asked Questions on GraphQL APIs

  🎊 Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – We want to hear from you! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

• Kaizen #198: Using Client Script for Custom Validation in Blueprint

  Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – 1 More to the Big Two-Oh-Oh! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

• Celebrating 200 posts of Kaizen! Share your ideas for the milestone post

  Hello Developers, We launched the Kaizen series in 2019 to share helpful content to support your Zoho CRM development journey. Staying true to its spirit—Kaizen Series: Continuous Improvement for Developer Experience—we've shared everything from FAQs

• Kaizen #193: Creating different fields in Zoho CRM through API

  🎊 Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – We want to hear from you! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

• Client Script | Update - Introducing Commands in Client Script!

  Have you ever wished you could trigger Client Script from contexts other than just the supported pages and events? Have you ever wanted to leverage the advantage of Client Script at your finger tip? Discover the power of Client Script - Commands! Commands

• Recent Topics

• Support Bots and Automations in External Channels

  Hello Zoho Cliq Team, How are you? We actively use Zoho Cliq for collaboration, including with our external developers. For this purpose, external channels are a key tool since they work seamlessly within the same interface as all of our other channels

• Answer Bot and Personalized Questions

  Hi there, I have the same problem using the SalesIQ Answer Bot and the Zoho Desk Answer Bot (which really need different names, to be honest, in order to avoid confusion...) Customers that visit our website ask questions in the form of "What do you do?"

• Handling Greetings/Small Talk at the Beginning of a Zobot Conversation

  Hello everyone, I’m currently configuring a **Zobot** in Zoho SalesIQ and everything is working as expected, except for one specific scenario at the very beginning of the conversation. My target audience has the habit of starting with a **greeting or

• Regex in Zoho Mail custom filters is not supported - but it works!

  I recently asked Zoho for help using regex in Zoho Mail custom filters and was told it was NOT supported. This was surprising (and frustrating) as regex in Zoho Mail certainly works, although it does have some quirks* To encourage others, here are 3 regex

• Importing a new list into campaigns

  I'm in the middle of switching my email platform to campaigns. I have a list that I want to import, and it overlaps with my existing Zoho CRM list. The fields in my Zoho CTM are more robust. Will this new list that I upload into my campaigns overwrite

• when I email a invoice how can i see it was sent and also were i can go to see all emails sent

  when I email a invoice how can i see it was sent and also were i can go to see all emails sent?

• Export Invoices to XML file

  Namaste! ZOHO suite of Apps is awesome and we as Partner, would like to use and implement the app´s from the Financial suite like ZOHO Invoice, but, in Portugal, we can only use certified Invoice Software and for this reason, we need to develop/customize on top of ZOHO Invoice to create an XML file with specific information and after this, go to the government and certified the software. As soon as we have for example, ZOHO CRM integrated with ZOHO Invoice up and running, our business opportunities

• Showing description in timesheet and timelogs.

  I am wondering if it’s possible in version 5 of Zoho People to have the description show by default or with a manipulation on the user’s part. Let me show you what I mean. As you can see this is the view for the users. Now if they want to see the full

• How can I see content of system generated mails from zBooks?

  System generated mails for offers or invices appear in the mail tab of the designated customer. How can I view the content? It also doesn't appear in zMail sent folder.

• CRM Blueprint Notification by Cliq

  Dear Zoho team, In Workflow, there is nofication by cliq, but in blueprint, there is no option as cliq notification. I think it is very convenient to get notified by Cliq , as there are multi modules in apps, but we will always check Cliqs

• Zoho People Attendance Regularization – Wrong Total Hours Displayed

  While using Zoho People, I observed that the attendance regularization is showing wrong total hours when applied to past dates. For example, if a check-in is added at 10:00 AM and check-out at 6:00 PM for a previous date, the system sometimes calculates

• Sync Contacts in iOS

  What does the "Sync Contacts" feature in the iOS Zoho Mail app do?

• Live webinar: Craft the ideal sales pitch deck with Show

  Every great sale starts with a great story. And your pitch deck? That’s where the story takes shape. But too often, these presentations end up looking generic, overloaded with text, or lacking structure. The good news is, it's easier to fix than you think!

• Project Statuses

  Hi All, We have projects that sometimes may not make it through to completion. As such, they were being marked as "Cancelled". I noticed that these projects still show as "Active" though which seems counter intuitive. In fact, the only way I can get them

• 👋 Welcome to the Zoho MCP Community

  Hello all, glad to have you here! This is your space for everything AI agents, MCP tools, and intelligent business apps. This community is for you — developers, partners, creators, and businesses exploring how agents can transform work. Whether you’re

• Suitability of Zoho One (Single User License) for Multi-State GST Compliance & Cost Analysis

  Hello Zoho Team, I am an e-commerce business owner selling on platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and Meesho, and I'm currently using their fulfillment warehouses. I have two GSTIN registrations and am planning to register for an additional 2-3 to expand

• DNS Manager

  Where Can I find my DNS manager so I can link this to click funnels or AWEBER

• Forwarder

  Hi, I tried to add a forwarder from which emails are sent to my main zoho account email . However, it asks me for a code that should be received at the forwarder email, which is still not activated to send to my zoho emial account. So how can I get the

• Forwarder

  Hi, I tried to add a forwarder from which emails are sent to my main zoho account email . However, it asks me for a code that should be received at the forwarder email, which is still not activated to send to my zoho emial account. So how can I get the

• How do I sync multiple Google calendars?

  I'm brand new to Zoho and I figured out how to sync my business Google calendar but I would also like to sync my personal Google calendar. How can I do this so that, at the very least, when I have personal engagements like doctor's appointments, I can

• Need to extract date from datetime field

  I have a datetime field and need only the date part from it. I am unable to find a built-in function that would be <DateTime>.Date(). I don't think I want to go the string conversion route of converting the datetime to string and then parsing out values and create a date out of it. Any one out there has a better solution to this? Thanks in adavnce. Regards Moiz Tankiwala Smart Training & IT Solutions

• How to Hide Article Links in SalesIQ Answer Bot Responses

  I have published an article in SalesIQ, and the Answer Bot is fetching the data and responding correctly. However, it is also displaying the article link, which I don’t want. How can I remove the link so that only the message is shown?

• New in Cadences: WhatsApp follow-ups, upgraded limits, and options for add-ons

  Hello everyone, We're rolling out two key updates to help you engage better and scale smarter with Cadences in Zoho CRM. Reach customers on WhatsApp, directly from Cadences Previously, Cadences have enabled you to automate follow-ups through emails, calls,

• additional accounts

  If I brought 5 emails to my account. Can I later buy additional emails.

• Issue in Zoho People Regularization – Incorrect Hour Calculation

  I have noticed that when applying attendance regularization in Zoho People for previous dates, the total working hours are not calculated correctly. For example, even if the check-in is 10:00 AM and check-out is 6:00 PM, the system shows an incorrect

• Why I am unable to configure Zoho Voice with my Zoho CRM account?

  I have installed Zoho Voice in my Zoho CRM, but as per the message there is some config needed in Zoho Voice interface. But when I click on the link given in the above message, I get an access denied page.

• Issue with Hour Calculation in Zoho People Attendance Module

  I have noticed an issue in the attendance regularization feature of Zoho People. When trying to regularize past dates, the total working hours are not calculated correctly. For example, if I enter a check-in and check-out time for a previous day, the

• Cliq Meeting Calls No Audio and Screen Share

  When in a Cliq channel meeting, the audio does not work at all on pc. When i use my phone as audio source, screen share on pc does not work. I have updated audio drivers but the strangest thing is that during a 1 on 1 call, it works well. Therefore the

• Bug in Total Hour Calculation in Regularization for past dates

  There is a bug in Zoho People Regularization For example today is the date is 10 if I choose a previous Date like 9 and add the Check in and Check out time The total hours aren't calculated properly, in the example the check in time is 10:40 AM check

• Work anniversary and birthdays on connect

  Hello, I like the idea of having employee's work anniversary and birthdays on the dashbaord. Do you have to have the employee complete this information themselves in connect settings, or does it pull from their directory settings? (ie. we use Zoho one

• Alias Email Id already exists

  Hi I'm trying to create an alias : contact @ yoavarielevy.co.il but i get the message  Alias Email Id already exists I had an account with the same name but I deleted it. Can you help? Thanx Yoav

• BANK FEED - MAYBANK , provider from YODLEE IS NOT WORKING

  As per topic, the provider YODLEE is not working for the BANK FEED. It have been reported since 2023 Q3, and second report on 2023 Q4. now almost end of 2024 Q1, and coming to 2024 Q2. Malaysia Bank Maybank is NOT working. can anyone check on this issue?

• Feature Request: Ability to Set a Custom List View as Default for All Users

  Dear Zoho CRM Support Team, We would like to request a new feature in Zoho CRM regarding List Views. Currently, each user has to manually select or favorite a custom list view in order to make it their default. However, as administrators, we would like

• Adding Multiple Products (Package) to a Quote

  I've searched the forums and found several people asking this question, but never found an answer. Is ti possible to add multiple products to a quote at once, like a package deal? This seems like a very basic function of a CRM that does quotes but I can't

• Zoho Commerce in multiple languages

  When will you be able to offer Zoho Commerce in more languages? We sell in multiple markets and want to be able to offer a local version of our webshop. What does the roadmap look like?

• webinar registration confirmation are landing in SPMA folders

  I am trialing zoho webinar and do not have access to custom domains. When I test user registrations, they are working but the resulting confirmation email is landing in a spam folder. How can I avoid this?

• Making digital signatures accessible to all: Introducing accessibility controls in Zoho Sign

  Hi there! At Zoho Sign, we are committed to building an inclusive digital experience for all our users. As part of our ongoing efforts to align with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), we’re updating the application with support that will go

• Is there a way to set Document Owner/Sender via the API

  When sending requests for zoho sign, it would seem zoho uses the id of the person that created the zoho api cred to determine the owner_id, is there a way to set a default for this?

• Delegates should be able to delete expenses

  I understand the data integrity of this request. It would be nice if there was a toggle switch in the Policy setting that would allow a delegate to delete expenses from their managers account. Some managers here never touch their expense reports, and

• Add Save button to Expense form

  A save button would be very helpful on the expense form. Currently there is a Save and Close button. When we want to itemize an expense, this option would be very helpful. For example, if we have a hotel expense that also has room service, which is a

• Next Page