How fresh are profiles returned by the Proxycurl API?

Steven Goh -

Proxycurl API returns profiles of varying levels freshness.

  • Profiles that are less than 29 days old.
    • Use use_cache=if-recent parameter to enable profile freshness of <= 29 days
    • On average, 88% of profiles are fetched in real-time when this parameter is provided.
    • The other 12% of profiles are popular profiles which are frequently queried which is why we cache them.
    • The drawback is that requests might take 2-3 seconds to complete. Use this parameter if you need fresh profiles.
  • Profiles with no freshness guarantee.
    • Use use_cache=if-present parameter to fetch cached profiles.
    • Profiles are fetched from LinkDB if it exists in LinkDB. If not, we will fetch them live.
    • The good thing about this parameter is that response returns almost immediately. Use this parameter if you need fast responses such as with UI applications.