Web API caching and scaling guidance requested

[Micahperez99]

Plan: Premium
Country: United States
Device: iPhone
Operating System: iOS

My Question or Issue

I’m building a non-streaming iOS catalog app where people rate and rank music and podcasts. The Web API is called only from our AWS backend with Client Credentials; the app does not play Spotify audio.

To reduce duplicate requests as we scale, we share temporary cached search and item-metadata responses across users, including cover-art URLs. We use batch endpoints where available, coalesce identical cache misses, globally throttle requests, and honor 429 Retry-After responses. Spotify content is attributed and links back to Spotify.

Could a Spotify staff member clarify:

• Whether cloud caching of Web API metadata and cover-art URLs is permitted.
• Whether a 60-day maximum cache period is acceptable; if it is not, what retention or revalidation approach is permitted.
• The compliant path for a non-streaming catalog app to scale without repeatedly hitting the app-wide Web API rate limit.

I’m happy to provide the client ID privately. Thank you.

[Ximzend]

Hi @Micahperez99 

Thanks for asking this in the Spotify Community.

To clarify: caching should only be used for data you just looked up, and only for a short time. The documentation says developers should only cache what is needed to make things faster right away, and it should stay very short‑lived and temporary. It cannot be used as a backup.

With a quota extension and normal use of the Spotify API, you should not run into rate‑limit problems.

Let me know if you need anything else.

[Micahperez99]

Hi Ximzend, 

Thank you for clarifying. My issue with this, as many developers have brought up, is the 250k user requirement for the quota extension. How would any startup product be able to get this many users in the first place with the initial developer api limit?

Have you seen situations where the quota extension is granted to newer sites/apps trying to use the spotify API. My worry is that I wouldn't be able to scale to a fraction of the 250k MAU before rate limits would become a problem for my account. Thank you!