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BrickLink API Usage

BrickLink is the most tightly limited of the marketplaces BrickLogic connects to, so it's worth understanding how its limits work. The short version: BrickLink gives each store 5,000 API calls per day, and BrickLogic manages that budget so your orders always sync.

If you haven't already, read How BrickLogic Uses Marketplace APIs first for the general concepts.

The daily quota: 5,000 calls​

BrickLink allows 5,000 API calls per store, per day. When the count is used up, BrickLink stops accepting calls from your store until the next reset.

When your day resets

BrickLink's quota day runs on UTC time, resetting at midnight UTC — which is early evening in North America (around 8:00pm Eastern / 5:00pm Pacific, depending on daylight saving). So your daily count doesn't roll over at your local midnight; it rolls over in the early evening. This is worth knowing: if you check your usage in the afternoon and it already looks high, that's normal — your "day" has been running since the previous evening.

A few important details:

  • The quota is per BrickLink account, not per app. If you use any other tool with the same BrickLink API key (for example BrickStock or BrickSync), those calls come out of the same 5,000. BrickLogic can't see those other tools' usage, so the real total may be higher than what BrickLogic shows.
  • You can lower your cap. In Settings → External Connections, you can set BrickLogic's daily cap below 5,000 to deliberately leave headroom for those other tools. BrickLogic will then treat your lower number as the ceiling.
Shared key, shared quota

If you run BrickLogic alongside another BrickLink tool on the same API key, lower BrickLogic's daily cap so the two don't collectively blow past 5,000 — which could temporarily lock your store out of the BrickLink API.

  • Reading orders or inventory is efficient — fetching your whole inventory is a single call.
  • Updating listings is one call per listing. BrickLink has no "bulk update," so pushing changes to 200 lots is 200 calls. This is why a large inventory re-sync can use a meaningful chunk of your daily quota.

How BrickLogic protects your orders​

Because the daily quota is a hard ceiling, BrickLogic prioritizes. Order syncing is treated as critical and is the last thing to ever be paused. Background activities — especially market-price refreshes — are lower priority and automatically step aside as your usage approaches the cap.

In practice: even if background price refreshes have used most of the day's quota, BrickLogic holds room in reserve so it can keep checking for and processing new orders.

Why your usage can look high​

This is the part that surprises most sellers, so here it is plainly.

BrickLogic includes a feature that keeps your market-price data fresh. To price your inventory well, BrickLogic periodically looks up recent sold prices on BrickLink for the items you stock. Each item it refreshes costs a couple of calls (one for new condition, one for used).

To do this without getting in the way of your day, BrickLogic runs this refresh near the end of each quota day — just before the midnight-UTC reset — and intentionally uses up spare quota that would otherwise simply expire. Unused quota doesn't roll over, so BrickLogic puts it to work keeping your pricing current before it's lost.

What this means for you:

  • It's completely normal to log in and see your BrickLink usage sitting high — often most of the way to your cap — even if you personally did nothing. Because the quota day resets in the early evening (midnight UTC), that end-of-day refresh shows up as "already used" for most of your local day. It's quota that would have been wasted anyway.
  • This refresh is the lowest priority, and it stops at the daily reset — so each new quota day starts fresh, with your full budget available for order syncing.
  • The items refreshed first are the ones that matter most to you: your listed inventory, then items you've flagged as priorities, then staged inventory, and finally popular catalog items.
Want to use less?

If you'd rather BrickLogic spend less of your BrickLink quota on background price data — for example because you share the key with another tool — lower your daily cap in Settings → External Connections. BrickLogic will scale its background refresh down to fit whatever ceiling you set.

What to do if you hit the limit​

If BrickLogic reports that BrickLink's quota is exhausted:

  • Order syncing will resume automatically at the next daily reset (midnight UTC).
  • If this happens regularly and you don't share your key with other tools, you likely have a very active store — reach out and we'll help tune your settings.
  • If you do share the key with another BrickLink tool, lower BrickLogic's daily cap so the two tools fit within 5,000 combined.