454 Throttling failure: Maximum sending rate exceeded
Your application is submitting to SES faster than the account's per-second sending rate, or has used its 24-hour quota (the wording is then "Daily message quota exceeded"). SES asks you to slow down; it has not rejected the message permanently and will accept it on a later attempt.
What the server replies
454 Throttling failure: Maximum sending rate exceeded.
- Sent by
- Amazon SES
- Type
- TemporaryRetry helps
- About
- Rate limits and quotas
- Enhanced code
- None sent
Who sends it
The SES SMTP interface and API at submission. The limits are per account per region and are shown in the SES console under Account dashboard.
Why it happens
- A burst of sends from a queue worker with no rate limiting, for example after a backlog.
- A new account with the default rate of one message per second.
- Multiple services sharing one SES account and together exceeding the quota.
- A loop in the application resubmitting the same message.
How to fix it
Add a limiter in front of SES
Send through a queue that respects the maximum send rate, with exponential back-off on 454. The AWS SDKs retry throttling errors automatically if you let them.
Request a higher limit
In the SES console open Account dashboard and request a sending quota increase. AWS raises limits for accounts with low bounce and complaint rates, often within a day.
Check for a resend loop
If the quota was consumed by a few messages sent thousands of times, fix the application before asking for more capacity.
Check it yourself
These free tools show the records and connections behind this code for your own domain or server.
Related codes
- 554 Message rejected: Email address is not verifiedAmazon SES refused to send because the From address, or its domain, has not been verified in the SES console for the region you are using.
- 550 5.4.5 Daily sending quota exceededThis one comes back when you send through Gmail, not to it.
- 421 4.7.0 Our system has detected an unusual rate of unsolicited mail originating from your IP addressGmail is throttling the sending IP.
Sources
Fewer bounces to look up.
Faivelo queues temporary failures and retries them on a schedule receivers accept, then tells your application once, in plain words, if a message finally cannot be delivered.
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Other free tools
All tools- Email DNS checkerCheck MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and reverse DNS for any domain and get the exact records to add or fix.
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- DMARC record generatorBuild a valid DMARC record from a few choices and copy the host and value into your DNS.
- DMARC report analyzerDrop in a DMARC aggregate report and see who is sending as your domain and whether they pass.
- SMTP connection testerConnect to any SMTP server, check TLS and the login step, and see each stage with its timing.
- Email header analyzerPaste raw headers to see every hop, where the delay was, and whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC passed.
- Email address validatorCheck whether an address is well formed, whether its domain accepts mail, and whether it is disposable or a role account.