How to avoid Discord rate limits and bot bans

Discord limits how fast a bot may send requests. A normal bot rarely notices, but a loop that edits many messages or reacts in bulk can hit the limit.

What a rate limit looks like

Your library prints a warning such as You are being rate limited or an error with status 429 Too Many Requests. Libraries like discord.js and discord.py wait and retry by themselves. A few warnings are normal. A constant stream means your code sends too much.

How to stay inside the limits

• Do work once. Cache results instead of asking Discord every time someone runs a command.
• Do not loop over many members or channels and call the API for each one. Use bulk actions where they exist, such as bulk delete.
• Slow down messages, edits and reactions in loops with a short wait between them.
• Defer long commands. Reply to a slash command within three seconds, then follow up: Common Discord bot errors.
• Avoid global rate limits by not running several copies of the same bot with the same token.

What can get a bot banned

Discord's rules, not ours, decide this. The common causes:

• Mass direct messages to people who did not ask for them.
• Spam, including joining many servers to advertise.
• Selfbots: logging in with a normal user account's token. Not allowed on Discord, and not allowed on our servers: Discord bot hosting rules and fair use.
• Leaking the token and having someone misuse it: How to keep your Discord bot token safe.

If your bot is already limited

1. Stop the server, read the console to find which action loops, fix it and start again.
2. If a bot is blocked for a long time, the cause is usually code that retries aggressively. Add a wait or limit.
3. Reset the token if you think someone else used it.