The application growth check is a free service that the eBay Developers Program provides to its members. During the application growth check process, we critically review all new applications for compliance with the application growth check requirements, at no cost to you.

Requesting an application growth check is required if you want to:

  • Increase the API call limits for your application

  • Use restricted APIs in production

The following lists some helpful recommendations to review before you submit an application growth check request:

  • Application readiness—You'll need a working application that we can test to ensure it complies with the requirements for the application growth check. Be sure to follow the guidelines below as you create your application.

  • API license and eBay policies—Check that your application complies with:

    • The eBay API License Agreement. This includes, but isn't limited to, how your application:

      • Collects statistical or other information related to specific eBay users, groups of eBay users, or types of eBay users.

      • Derives conversion, completion, or success rates, unless the information is specific to the user logged into your application and only to be shown to that user.

      • Estimates or displays reserve auction prices of other users.

      • Derives sales or activity rates for listings with specific features or enhancements, unless the information is specific to the listings created by the user logged into your application and only for that user's view.

      • Displays a user's private profile or detailed feedback information, unless the information is specific to the user logged into your application and only to be shown to that user.

      • Collects statistical data about eBay.

      • Derives average selling price or gross merchandise value for any eBay category.

    • eBay site policies

    • Consumer protection and privacy laws

    • The eBay User Agreement

    • The eBay User Privacy Notice

  • Technical best practices—Ensure that your application:

    • Follows the OWASP secure coding principles. Learn about web application vulnerabilities and how to protect against them in the OWASP "Top Ten".

    • Uses the UTF-8 encoding scheme (not ISO-8859-1). See Working with UTF-8 in the eBay developer’s knowledge base.

    • Uses the latest versions of the APIs. Go to the API documentation and view the release notes for the APIs you're using to find the latest versions. When you submit your information, you’ll need to specify which version of each API your application is using.

    • Handles errors gracefully and implements retries correctly. In particular, implements retries for a maximum of two times for infrastructure errors. Errors that are returned from calls must include useful details and instructions for both end users and applications.

    • Limits the volume of data returned by asking only for the required amount of information and doesn't make calls more frequently than necessary. eBay reserves the right to restrict an application's polling frequencies for any calls. This type of restriction typically occurs when eBay determines that an application is causing a negative operational impact to the eBay site.

    • Doesn't collect eBay usernames and passwords from your customers. If your application uses APIs that require user authentication (some APIs don’t), it must retrieve user access tokens: OAuth tokens for RESTful APIs and OAuth or Auth’n’Auth tokens for Traditional APIs.

    • Recovers gracefully when the number of items returned per page changes. Some calls return multiple items in response to a single call. eBay reserves the right to change the maximum number of items returned per page.

  • If you have a web application, it doesn't put eBay web pages served by eBay servers in an iFrame.

  • If you have a desktop application with an embedded browser and your application displays an eBay web page served by eBay servers, your application displays the complete URL of the page.

  • If you have a search application, it uses the Buy API or Finding API.