Policy Purpose and Details

On February 20th, Onshape will begin enforcing their annual call limit policy. (A per-minute and per-day has already existed.) This policy is designed to further reduce PTC’s AWS server costs associated with hosting Onshape.

The limit depends on the subscription, but most notably:

  • 5,000 per user for Professional subscriptions
  • 10,000 per user for Enterprise subscriptions

Beyond this, API calls must be purchased.

Notable exceptions include:

  • Publicly available apps in the Onshape app store
  • FeatureScripts contained in your Onshape models
    • This is because the call comes from Onshape’s server and not a separate server
  • Webhook notifications

Tips and Tricks for Developers

Savvy Onshape developers will be rewarded. Unsavvy ones will be punished. If you have a private Onshape app, be sure to rewrite portions of your code that make unnecessary API calls. For example:

  • Make a call once and then cache retrieved information for later use rather than repeating calls.
  • Look for API calls that collect all of the data you need instead of just some of the data you need.
  • Avoid API calls in “simple” loops that run on every assembly part, configuration, custom property, etc.
  • Use client messaging rather than API calls to obtain user selections in the model.

Don’t Guess – Hire Experts

If you need expert Onshape developers who know the ins-and-outs of the API, contact us to discuss your project. Alternatively, if you’re interested in developing FeatureScripts yourself, check out the world’s only zero-to-hero FeatureScript training course.