Jotform API: Error 403s or 401s.

We are an IPaaS platform and we offer an integration with Jotform that makes API calls to the /form/{id}/submissions page https://api.jotform.com/docs/#form-id-submissions.

Everything was working fine, but we recently started seeing that the API randomly starts throwing 401s for some customers stating that the API is invalid (We did check, and the API key is still valid if we manually make a call). Today around 7:40 AM UTC, 14 of our customers received 403s (rate limit errors). All 14 at the same time. It seems like something is not right with Jotform's API and it is randomly throwing these errors for the users. We did check and the keys appear to be working.

Hi Jalal,

Thanks for reaching out to Jotform Support. The "401 Unauthorized" error usually means that your API request is missing valid authentication credentials or lacks permission to access the resource. ALSO, "403 Forbidden" means insufficient permissions or access denied. Can you try generating a new API key to ensure you have the correct credentials? Let me show you how:

1. Visit My Forms.
2. Select your Avatar profile in the top right corner.
3. Select Settings.
4. Choose API from the left panel.
5. Click on Create New Key.

Double-check that the API key you're using has the necessary permissions to access form submissions. Jotform API keys can be restricted to specific forms or actions.

Also, verify that you're using the correct endpoint and form ID in the URL. The endpoint should follow this structure:

https://api.jotform.com/form/{formID}/submissions. 

For more details, check out the Jotform API documentation to correctly structure your requests.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any other questions.

Hey Kyle,

Thank you for the details. Everything checks out for all of these users—their integrations were running smoothly, and they have provided full access to the generated key. We were making calls to Jotform's API correctly and they were working; however, one day, at the exact same time, all users received the same error. It can't be a coincidence. Could you please look into this further? Was this an issue on your API's end?

Hi Jalal,

I checked the screenshot that you shared and was able to see the “API-Limit exceeded” error message. Check out the screenshot below:

This error message means you have exceeded your daily limit for the API calls. Starter plans have 1000 requests per day. API limit resets every day at midnight Eastern Standard Time zone. This could be the cause why your customer got the error 403. You can check this guide for more details on this.

Let us know if you need any other help.

Hello, see that's the thing. This is what's confusing to me. We barely made 100 calls that day for any of these given users. The reason I say this is because our system runs on a schedule and its not possible to make 1000 API calls when the system only ran about 100 times by the time we started receiving these errors. Is there something your API team can look into?

Hi Jalal,

I created a ticket and escalated this to our Developers. Although we don't know exactly when we'll hear back from them, we’ll circle back to this thread when we have an update.

Thanks for your patience and understanding, we appreciate it.

@kobe, is there any update on this thread? The same issue has occurred multiple times again for several of our customers. All the customers are using different accounts, and some are even on higher tiers. It's highly unlikely that we caused their accounts to hit the rate limit in a single day, especially when we're barely making around 288 calls a day. Is it possible to expedite the resolution of this issue?

Is it also possible to investigate the issue for the specific customers against their API keys in the Jotform logs to see if they actually hit their rate limit within a 24-hour window?

Hi Jalal,

There haven’t been any updates yet. I know that it’s taking some time to resolve. I’ve marked this as a Priority and reached out to our Developers again. We’ll let you know as soon as there’s an update.

In the meantime, we also have a guide about Daily API Call Limits that you can check out. Also, checkingyour remaining API Call requests is easy, let me show you how:

1. Open the Jotform Developers API.
2. Under the Get User Information enter your API key in the field under Test Console.
3. Click on the Try it out button.
4. Finally, scroll down to search for limit-left in the response. This shows your remaining API requests for the day.

Also, if your customers would us to check their account, we can do it only if they contact us with their account creating a new thread and requesting it. So, consider suggesting your customer to create a forum thread from the Contact Us page, and we’ll be happy to help.

Reach out again if you have any other questions.

Thank you so much. Any updates on this would be really helpful.

Hi Jalal,

Although we don’t have a solution yet, rest assured, we’ll keep working on this until it's resolved. We’ll get back to you as soon as we have an update.

We appreciate your patience while we work on a solution.

Hey Vincenzo,

Do we have an update on this? It seems like the same issue occurred again on the 19th of March. I don't think it's a coincidence that 70+ integrations from different accounts all faced the same issue on the same day, especially when we aren't even making calls close to their daily rate limit. Could you please take a look into this?

Hi Jalal,

Thanks for the detailed follow-up. To help us investigate further, could you please share a cURL example of one of the failing requests (including the endpoint, headers, and any parameters used)?

This will help our team replicate the issue on our end and better understand what might be triggering the 401 or 403 responses.

Looking forward to your response.

Hi Zahir,

Here is a sample cURL from one of these integrations:

curl --location --globoff 'https://api.jotform.com/form/243315531269152/submissions?filter={%22created_at%3Agt%22%3A%222025-03-21%2005%3A33%3A02%22%2C%22created_at%3Alt%22%3A%222025-03-21%2005%3A38%3A45%22}&limit=100' \

--header 'APIKEY: ●●●●●●●●'



FYI - Our integrations just access this endpoint for detecting any changes.

Hi Jalal,

I have forwarded your sample cURL to our developers. Rest assured that we’ll get back to you with an update as soon as we have one.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. We appreciate it.

Hey Vicenzo,

We have more reported cases of this; a GOLD tier customer using our integration faced this issue on Mar 25, 09:51 AM EST. They have four active integrations syncing registrations from four different forms. Their daily rate limit is 100,000 per day, and after the last reset on Mar 25, 12:00 AM EST, our app made around 600-700 calls, and their rate limit shows that as well, as you can see in the screenshot. I just checked the remaining limit, and it still stands at 99,302 (I checked this around Mar 25, 08:46 PM EST).

If a user has barely consumed a fraction of their daily rate limit, how is it possible that they receive this error when the API key being used for all four integrations is the same? The error was randomly received in just one of these integrations. It would make sense if all the integrations experienced it. We retried the failed call, and it started to work again. If this were truly a rate-limit issue, the calls should not have worked before the hard reset time mentioned in your help docs (midnight EST). The same issue is being faced by multiple users, and I find it hard to believe that nearly 100 users would encounter this error at the exact same time. As you can see from this example, the error is not even correct, as the user above, who shared the issue, still has a significant limit remaining for the day.

Could you please prioritize this issue? We reported it months ago, and we keep facing it again and again. I would like to avoid having each individual customer report this from their accounts.

Hi Jalal,

There haven’t been any updates yet. I know that it’s taking some time to resolve. I’ve reached out to our Developers again and forwarded the screenshots and additional information you shared. We’ll let you know as soon as there’s an update.

We really appreciate your patience and understanding while we look into this.

Hi Jalal,

Thank you for your patience as we look into your concern. There still haven’t been any updates yet. I've reached out to our Developers again. We’ll let you know as soon as there’s an update.

I answered your other question on a new thread. You can go ahead and check that out here.

Let us know if you have any other questions.