Google does not publish a rate limit for unofficial Google Trends clients. The website will return 429 when a scrape session looks automated. That number is not a documented quota, and it is not stable. Google's own Trends API alpha is application-gated. The announcement does not list a public QPS. Trends API is a different contract: POST https://api.trendsapi.ai/api with a Bearer key. Only a successful 200 counts against quota. Current plan caps are on pricing. Endpoint shape is on the API reference.
Google does not publish a scraper quota
pytrends documents the gap in its caveats: the rate limit is not publicly known. Issue threads collect sleeps, proxies, and cookie tricks. None of those are a policy Google committed to. A pipeline that encodes "60 seconds after 429" is encoding folklore.
Official alpha access is not a published QPS number
The July 2025 Search Central post describes consistently scaled interest, a rolling 1800-day window, and rolling alpha access. It does not publish a self-serve key or a request budget. Until a project is approved, there is no official limit to configure because there is no official client to call.
Successful 200s are what this product counts
POST https://api.trendsapi.ai/api
Authorization: Bearer <api_key>
Content-Type: application/json
{"mode":"get_growth","source":"google search","keyword":"bitcoin","percent_growth":["12M"]}
The response envelope is {"statusCode": int, "body": string}. Parse body a second time. A 200 with a parsed inner error is still a completed call. A transport 429 or 401 is not. Do not treat Google's website 429 as a signal to add sleep in front of this POST.
Burst versus a plan cap
A short loop of get_time_series for a keyword list will hit a burst limit faster than one get_growth with percent_growth ["3M","12M","YTD"]. Collapse windows first. If the envelope is 429, stop and read pricing. Changing hl or rotating cookies does nothing on a Bearer key.