QuickBooks API Changes and Limitations

QuickBooks API Call Limits & Partner Program Tiers

The Intuit App Partner Program is live and billing. It launched in the US on 28 July 2025 and expanded to the UK, Australia and Canada (excluding Quebec) on 3 November 2025. CorePlus metering began on 3 November 2025 in all four regions, including the US. Intuit's own classification article was never updated after go-live and still reads as though the launch were pending, so use it for the classification rules rather than for timing.

Core vs CorePlus: what is actually metered

Intuit classifies every API call as Core or CorePlus, based on both the endpoint and the HTTP method:

• Core (data-in): creates and updates. Free and uncapped on every tier, including the free Builder tier.
• CorePlus (data-out): everything that reads data. List and get-one calls, the /query endpoint, all /reports/* calls, and attachment downloads. Metered against a monthly allowance.

In Apideck terms: the read side of your integration is what consumes the allowance. Writes are classified as Core and are not themselves metered; fetching a list of invoices is metered. Read-heavy syncs and reporting are what consume credits.

Metering counts individual QuickBooks API calls, not Unify operations, and one Unify request can result in more than one QuickBooks call. Budget headroom rather than assuming a one-to-one mapping.

Tier table

All figures are USD. Intuit publishes separate rate cards per region, so your local pricing may differ (Silver is GBP 225 per month in the UK). Confirm the card for your billing country before you budget.

Worked example: a Silver partner making 2 million CorePlus calls in a month pays the $300 flat fee plus the 1 million calls above the included credits, billed in the 1M-10M band at $3.50 per 1,000 — $300 + $3,500 = $3,800 for that month.

Builder blocks, paid tiers bill

The difference between the free tier and a paid one is not only volume, it is the failure mode:

• On Builder, the 500,000 CorePlus calls per month is a hard cap. Calls above it are blocked outright until the allowance resets: they are not throttled and not billed as overage.
• On Silver and above, there is no cap. Usage above the included credits is billed as overage at the rates in the table, so a traffic spike costs money instead of breaking the integration.

Adding a valid payment method to move from Builder to Silver is what removes the cap.

Moving up a tier

• Silver is self-service: a valid payment method is the only requirement. It is also the entry point for Intuit's Premium APIs, which is what unlocks the projects resource — unavailable on Builder at any call volume.
• Gold requires a minimum of 500 active connections, a listing on the Intuit App Marketplace, and Intuit review.
• Platinum requires a minimum of 3,000 active connections, a listing, and Intuit review.

An active connection is one QuickBooks Online or Intuit Enterprise Suite company with a live subscription and a valid, non-expired OAuth token. Intuit maintains the current tier requirements, and this definition, in the App Partner Program FAQ — check there before planning an upgrade. Because Gold and Platinum are gated on connection volume and a Marketplace listing, a larger allowance cannot simply be purchased at those tiers: you grow into them, and the upgrade is not automatic. Silver has no call ceiling, so high read volume alone never forces an upgrade — it is billed as overage at the rates above. Moving to Gold becomes worth costing out when your overage consistently exceeds the $1,400 difference in flat fees — but only if you also meet the connection and listing gates above, which is the binding constraint for most apps.

Watching your usage

Your partner tier and an API usage chart are both shown in the Intuit Developer Portal. Check the chart before you rely on Builder-tier headroom: the block takes effect as soon as the allowance is exhausted.

What is not metered

• Only successful (2xx) production calls are metered, so failed and throttled calls do not consume the allowance.
• Sandbox calls are never metered, and neither are OAuth endpoints (discovery, token, refresh, revoke, userinfo, JWKS). Development, testing and re-authorisation therefore cost nothing against your CorePlus allowance.
• The Payments API, the Desktop API and the Intuit QuickBooks Workforce API (previously named the Payroll API) sit outside the variable API fees entirely.

A paid tier's flat monthly Program fee still applies regardless of how little you use.

Billing is per workspace, not per app

Tier, metering and billing all operate at the Intuit Developer Workspace level rather than per app. Usage and active-connection counts aggregate across every production app in the workspace, so several production apps under one workspace draw on a single pooled allowance. Keep that in mind if you split staging-like or per-customer apps across the same workspace.

Who pays

Platform service fees fall on whoever owns the Intuit app and OAuth client, never on the end QuickBooks company. Intuit confirms this explicitly for the two cases that look like exceptions:

• An app that is not listed on the Intuit App Marketplace still pays.
• An app that exists purely to supply credentials to another platform or to a systems integrator still pays.

Apideck-provided QuickBooks credentials are intended for evaluation and testing. A production integration uses your own Intuit app, so the tier, the allowance and any associated fees or blocks are yours.

Where these figures come from

• Platform service fees and pricing model
• Core vs CorePlus API classification — classification rules only; the article's launch framing was never updated after go-live
• App Partner Program FAQ

The fee table above comes from Intuit's published Platform Service Fee table. The platform service fees article carries the pricing model in full and works through Silver and Gold examples that confirm their flat fees, included credits and entry-level overage rates. Platinum's flat fee and the intermediate overage bands are not restated in that article; they come from Intuit's complete rate card per region, which the article links and which is the authoritative version for your billing country. Confirm your own region's figures and your current tier in the Intuit Developer Portal before you commit to a budget.

Intuit is the authority on its own pricing: if a figure here disagrees with Intuit's own published rate card, Intuit wins. If you hit a mismatch, tell Apideck Support so we can correct this guide.

Recent API Changes and Limitations

Throttling Limits (Effective 2025)

• Production: 500 requests per minute per realm ID, and 10 concurrent requests per second per realm ID and app. These are request-rate throttles and are separate from the monthly CorePlus allowance above; no tier upgrade raises them.
• Sandbox Environment: API calls are throttled at 10 requests per second per realm ID and app (effective September 15, 2025), matching Production limits.

Address Field Changes (Effective 2025)

• Country Fields: Starting September 15, 2025 (Sandbox) / October 31, 2025 (Production), the Country field in CompanyAddr, CustomerCommunicationAddr, and LegalAddr will always return ISO 3-letter country codes (e.g., "USA" instead of "United States"). You can still send any string values, but responses will be normalized.

• Deprecated Lat/Long Fields: Starting August 15, 2025 (Sandbox) / September 15, 2025 (Production), Lat and Long fields under address objects will no longer be returned in API responses.

• Deprecated Source Fields: Starting August 15, 2025 (Sandbox) / September 15, 2025 (Production), the "Source" field in Customer and Vendor entities will no longer be returned in API responses.

Usage Limits (Effective September 15, 2025)

QuickBooks Online subscription tiers have usage limits that are now enforced via API:

• Accounts: QuickBooks Online Plus allows up to 250 accounts
• Classes and Departments: QuickBooks Online Plus allows up to 40 combined classes and locations
• Attempting to exceed these limits will return error code 6570 with usage limit guidance

Account Validation (Effective September 15, 2025 Sandbox / October 31, 2025 Production)

• Fixed Asset accounts with subtypes AccumulatedDepreciation, AccumulatedAmortization, or AccumulatedDepletion can only be created as child accounts, not parent accounts
• Violations will return error code 6000 with validation details

Query Filtering Changes (Effective September 15, 2025 Sandbox / October 31, 2025 Production)

• ID field filtering no longer supports operators >, !=, <
• Supported: ID = '40' or ID in ('10', '15', '20')
• Unsupported: ID != '250' or ID > '250' (filters will be ignored and all values returned)