Canvas API Fees, Quotas & Limits in Atomic Search

To continue to maintain the quality of Atomic Search and sustainable, we’ve made the following changes:

Tracking. Track Canvas API calls made on behalf of each customer.
Quotas. Assign annual Canvas API quotas and daily limits to each customer.
Limits. Stop calling Canvas APIs once a customer hits its daily limit.
Reports. Provide customer-facing reports showing Canvas API usage.
Controls. Provide settings that customers can use to control how quotas are used.
Optimize API Usage. Reduce the number of Canvas API calls made.
Canvas Live Events. Handle additional Canvas Live Events notifying Atomic Search about content updates. We also contributed code to core Canvas to add Canvas Live Events for more content types.
Canvas Data 2 (CD2) Support. Add support for indexing Canvas course content by calling CD2 APIs instead of by calling Canvas REST APIs. This dramatically reduces the number of API calls that Atomic Search makes.
Find and Replace (F&R). Disable account-level F&R for a customer unless they have enabled the CD2 integration with Atomic Search.

Special Limit Exception for August 2026

In order to give customers time to adjust to these changes, for the month of August 2026, customers are allowed to use up to 12x their normal Canvas API daily limits. We hope this will allow customers and Atomic Jolt visibility into how many Canvas API calls Atomic Search is making for them and the effect of using the provided usage controls. After August 2026, the daily limit will be adjusted back to 3x the normal daily limit instead of 12x. See the Q&A section for information on how daily limits are calculated. Please note that we are putting quotas and limits in place because, without them, accidental or malicious use of Atomic Search could generate Canvas API fees large enough to threaten Atomic Jolt's ability to operate.

Actions You Can Take Now

To get the best performance from Atomic Search, we encourage customers to:

Enable Canvas Live Events. This ensures indexes are quickly updated when course content changes.
Enable CD2 access. This dramatically reduces the Canvas API calls needed to index new content and keep indexes up to date.

In-App Information About API Limits

We’ve added information to the Atomic Search interface to inform users about these changes:

Indexing may be delayed. If Atomic Search hits its Canvas API call limit, indexing is delayed until the next day, which may result in out-of-date indexes.
Customers without the Canvas Live Events integration enabled. If your Canvas isn’t configured to send Live Events to Atomic Search, you must manually request an index update after making changes to a course. New courses and changes to course status and other metadata will continue to be automatically updated at least once each day.
Customers without CD2. If your Canvas isn’t sharing CD2 data with Atomic Search, account-level F&R is disabled. Course level F&R is still enabled if you had enabled account or course level F&R prior to August 1, 2026.

Canvas API Usage Reports and Controls

Customer application admins can view your Canvas API quotas and usage on the Canvas API Usage screen in Atomic Search. You can also control:

Subaccounts - Which Canvas sub-accounts are indexed.
Course types - Which types of courses are indexed: active, in preparation, or old.
Content types - Which types of content are indexed (e.g. pages, files, assignments, quizzes, and announcements).

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Instructure start charging vendors fees to call Canvas APIs?
Instructure has stated that the fees help cover infrastructure costs and encourage vendors to use the APIs more efficiently.

What does Instructure charge for?
Instructure currently charges based on the number of Canvas REST API calls a vendor's tool makes each month. It doesn’t yet charge for Live Events or Canvas Data 2 (CD2) API calls, but Instructure has stated that it plans to charge for CD2 API calls in the future. However, the number of CD2 API calls is significantly lower than the number of REST API calls. Because of that, customers will likely never hit quota limits.

What is the basis for determining Canvas API quotas?
Customer annual Canvas API quotas are based on the size of a customer’s annual subscription fee. You can see your annual quota by going to the Canvas API Usage screen in Atomic Search.

How are customer daily limits calculated?
The daily limit is calculated as follows:

Daily limit = Remaining daily average * Allowed burst multiplier

Remaining daily average = Remaining quota / Remaining contract days for the year

Remaining quota = Annual quota - Actual calls already used

Allowed burst multiplier = 1 + 2 × (Remaining contract days for the year / 365)
This is a linear function that declines from 3 to 1 over the period of a year.

Each customer's Annual quota is a fraction of the total number of Canvas API calls that Atomic Jolt pays for. The fraction is calculated using:

Customer Atomic Search License Fee / Total of All Customer Search License Fees

How has Atomic Search optimized its API usage?
Atomic Search optimized its API usage in three ways:

Stop polling. By default, Atomic Search no longer calls Canvas REST APIs daily to check for content updates in indexed courses (it still checks daily for new courses and status changes). Instead, existing course indexes are updated only when a user requests it. Course indexes will continue to be updated immediately if your Canvas instance sends Canvas Live Events to Atomic Search.
- Optionally, at least for August 2026, we've given customers the option to enable polling of active courses for content updates every 24 hours.
Call bulk APIs. Atomic Search now uses Canvas REST API calls that request page content and modules in bulk rather than one at a time. These are new Canvas APIs that have been added since Atomic Search was first implemented.
Use CD2 for new and updated content. If you share CD2 data with Atomic Search, it uses CD2 APIs during initial indexing and course copy.

Where are Canvas API usage reports shown?
Log into Canvas as an account or application administrator, open Atomic Search, and select Canvas Usage from the three-dot menu in the top right. This report is visible to administrators only.

Will CD2-based indexes be current?
Instructure updates CD2 data every four hours, so CD2-based indexing may lag by up to four hours. To reduce this delay, we recommend also enabling Canvas Live Events. With Live Events on, changes to individual course items update immediately, while course copy and blueprint push still rely on CD2.

Is sharing CD2 data with Atomic Search secure?
Yes. Atomic Jolt follows industry best practices for security and privacy, including annual SOC 2 audits and penetration testing. Atomic Search only requests CD2 content tables, never tables containing user information. Instructure plans to release table-scoped key support for CD2 APIs before October 1, 2026. Table scoped-keys will allow customers to restrict Atomic Search CD2 access to the course-content tables that Atomic Search needs.

How can you limit which CD2 data Atomic Search can access?
The CD2 APIs do not currently provide a way to issue credentials that limit which data can be retrieved (table-scoped API keys). Atomic Jolt has requested this capability, and Instructure has committed to implementing it before October 1, 2026. Once table-scoped keys are available, we will provide instructions for creating a key limited to only the tables Atomic Search needs.

How does CD2-based Find and Replace work?
If CD2 access is enabled, Atomic Search uses CD2 to index and cache content, then runs Find against that cache. For each match, it calls the Canvas API to confirm the content hasn’t changed since it was last indexed, then updates it. To stay within quota, each F&R job is limited to one-tenth of the day’s Canvas API quota.

Does Atomic Search still support indexing and searching Canvas Discussions?
Searching Canvas Discussions is a premium feature used by very few Atomic Search customers. We’re still evaluating whether and how to continue supporting it.