GitHub API Rate Limits: an Unauthenticated 304 Still Costs You a Request

No token. One IP. July 29, 2026: GET /repos/python/cpython 200 5996 B remaining 32 -> 31 + If-None-Match (no Authorization header) 304 0 B remaining 31 -> 30 + If-None-Match 304 0 B remaining 30 -> 29 + If-None-Match 304 0 B remaining 29 -> 28 Three conditional requests. Three 304 Not Modified . Zero bytes of body across all three. Three requests gone from a bucket of 60 per hour. I opened the terminal to write the opposite post. The short version: if you call the GitHub REST API without an Authorization header, an If-None-Match request that comes back 304 still decrements x-ratelimit-remaining . The ETag saves you bytes. It does not save you quota. GitHub's documentation states the claim five times on one page and attaches the condition to two of them, and that clause falls off easily when a sentence gets quoted on its own. The post I meant to write My working title was something like "poll GitHub for free with ETags". I believed it. I had read the sentence about 304 responses not using your rate limit, I had repeated it to other people, and the plan was a tidy little piece with a before-and-after budget chart. The first run killed it. remaining went down. My first reaction was that my counter reading was wrong, which is the normal reaction and usually the correct one. It was not wrong. So the post changed, and the finding turned out to be worth more than the one I went in with. Does a 304 count against the GitHub rate limit? What the docs actually say Here is the part that matters, and I want to be precise because it would be easy and dishonest to turn this into "GitHub's docs are wrong". They are not. On the page Best practices for using the REST API the claim shows up five times. Two of the five carry a condition; three do not. Here is the strict one, the only place on the page where the condition is spelled out as a header: "Making a conditional request does not count against your primary rate limit if a 304 response is returned and the request was made while c