actions/checkout download fails with 429 Too Many Requests (rate‑limit) while fetching tarball

[stasmas]

Why are you starting this discussion?

Question

What GitHub Actions topic or product is this about?

Misc

Discussion Details

Our CI/CD workflow runs on GitHub‑hosted runners and uses several actions, including aws‑actions/configure‑aws‑credentials@v1, Kaven‑Universe/github‑action‑current‑date‑time@v1, and actions/checkout@v3. The job attempts to download the action tarballs from api.github.com at the beginning of the workflow.

Observed behaviour
On 29 July 2025 we noticed that the workflow fails consistently when it reaches the actions/checkout@v3 step. The runner successfully downloads the other actions but receives HTTP 429 errors (Too Many Requests) when attempting to fetch the checkout tarball. The relevant logs look like this:

Download action repository 'aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v1' (SHA:67fbcbb121271f7775d2e7715933280b06314838)
Download action repository 'Kaven-Universe/github-action-current-date-time@v1' (SHA:f2c12d90cff9c3e7b1f50430886e632fe31fcee1)
Download action repository 'actions/checkout@v3' (SHA:f43a0e5ff2bd294095638e18286ca9a3d1956744)
Warning: Failed to download action 'https://api.github.com/repos/actions/checkout/tarball/f43a0e5ff2bd294095638e18286ca9a3d1956744'. Error: Response status code does not indicate success: 429 (Too Many Requests). C7ED:73185:12E03A:1BD9AA:6888807C
Warning: Back off 14.883 seconds before retry.
Warning: Failed to download action 'https://api.github.com/repos/actions/checkout/tarball/f43a0e5ff2bd294095638e18286ca9a3d1956744'. Error: Response status code does not indicate success: 429 (Too Many Requests). A7A9:105650:12E9BA:1BE435:6888808B
Warning: Back off 22.085 seconds before retry.
Error: Response status code does not indicate success: 429 (Too Many Requests).

---

The error persists on re‑runs, and no other steps appear to trigger the rate‑limit.

Expected behaviour
The runner should be able to download the actions/checkout tarball just like other actions. We expect the action to handle rate‑limiting gracefully or for GitHub to exempt actions downloads from standard API limits.

Additional notes

Previous issues (#775 and #1432 in this repository) discuss similar 429 errors when cloning repositories or fetching submodules. In issue #1432 a user suggested implementing exponential backoff when the API returns 429
github.com
, and in issue #775 the maintainers noted that the error is tied to GitHub’s API rate‑limits rather than the action itself
github.com
. However, those discussions involve git fetch operations; in this case the error occurs during the download of the action’s tarball itself.

We are using the default GITHUB_TOKEN for authentication and have not changed the runner configuration.

---

Questions

Is this a known rate‑limiting issue affecting action downloads?

Are there recommended workarounds (e.g., caching tarballs or using a different API endpoint)?

Could the checkout action implement exponential backoff or honour Retry‑After headers when receiving 429 responses
github.com
?

Any guidance would be appreciated. Thank you!

[ShubhamGajera]

[JackCoplandGranta]

host your own runner to avoid API limits.

This is not true, we've see the same issue on self hosted runners over the past day or so.

[owattley-rotageek]

This is happening to me, too. Github Team Plan, private repos, self hosted runners. Using /actions/checkout@v4. It retries a couple of times then fails.

[owattley-rotageek]

Update - just checked my logs and I think the 429 problem was possibly resolved as part of the incident here: https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/spbr5ff8hyt2 however I'm still seeing occasional weird errors like this on azure/login:

Error: Failed to fetch federated token from GitHub. Please make sure to give write permissions to id-token in the workflow.

No idea if it's related, but it's intermittent.

[maxbirkner]

There was an outage recently, so you might see some effects of that still https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/61btx2g21zc6. I was wondering if there is a way to cache Github actions on self-hosted runners.

[rperryng]

It seems they made a new incident for the 429 issue in particular:
https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/spbr5ff8hyt2

[alexandrule]

They said that it was fixed, but it doesn't work :(

[ajschaf]

I am getting the same issue. It started today.

[stasmas]

yep, it's from Today

[ivanmjartan]

+1

[antoolx]

+1

[identw]

+1

[Lestrigon17]

+1

[MIE-levij]

+1, seeing this issue today with a different action appleboy/ssh-action

[alexandrule]

+1

[JMoratelli]

+1

[github-actions[bot]]

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