[capableweb]

It does have a rate limit, it's just very very high. I've hit it sometime when trying to download every single item since day 0. But it's very lenient, you have to run multiple threads downloading as fast as they can in order to hit it.

The API is not hosted by HN/Ycombinator themselves. If I recall correctly, it was initially hosted by Firebase which is/was a company seed-funded by Ycombinator. It (Firebase) is now a part of Google, so I guess you could say Google is hosting the HN API now.

With that, comes everything they are doing to prevent malicious ddos attacks.

[codesections]

> It does have a rate limit, it's just very very high. I've hit it sometime when trying to download every single item since day 0.

Interesting. The API README states:

> There is currently no rate limit.

I guess that's wrong/out of date. I wonder when that changed?

[sargstuff]

Would hazzard a guess, matches service provider account limits. (hopefuly not because got billed for exceeding account limits)