Connection timeouts to api.aladhan.com from our server IP — possible block?

raman10

Hi, we use the AlAdhan API (api.aladhan.com). Your terms page doesn't mention any license restrictions for API consumers — just confirming there's no issue using it commercially, and asking whether requests from our server (DigitalOcean droplet, IP 146.190.210.115) might be blocked — we're seeing consistent connection timeouts to api.aladhan.com from that IP specifically (all other outbound traffic from that server works fine, and traceroute shows a clean path into your host's network). Any help appreciated.

meezaan

raman10 There is no restriction for commercial use but the standard rate limits apply to the api.aladhan.com domain.

The entire Digital Ocean ASN is blocked at the request of Digital Ocean - they could not control abuse originating from their IPs so they asked that we just block the ASN.

raman10

Thanks for the clarification — that explains it. Since the block is on DigitalOcean's ASN as a whole (due to abuse from other tenants), rather than anything specific to our usage, is there any way to get our droplet's IP individually allowlisted or exempted from that block?

We're happy to self-enforce a rate limit on our end — e.g. capping our requests well under the standard 12/second limit — if that would help you consider an exception. Let us know what would work, or if there's another way to verify we're a legitimate, low-volume consumer rather than one of the abusive sources that caused the block.

meezaan

raman10 We made a decision last year to no longer whitelist any IPs for commercial applications - it’s not quite in the spirit of offering a service for the community in general - so I am sorry.

There is the option of premium hosting of the APIs - but I am not sure it will be worth it if your volumes are very low.

raman10

Thanks for clarifying. I understand the restriction regarding IP whitelisting.
Since our API usage will be relatively low, could you please suggest the best and most reliable solution for our use case?
Would you recommend any of the following alternatives?
Using a local prayer-time calculation library instead of calling the API
Downloading/caching the required prayer-time data and serving it locally
Using another AlAdhan-supported data source or endpoint that is accessible from DigitalOcean
Any other recommended fallback approach for reliable prayer times without making frequent API requests

Our main requirement is to support different countries, locations, and time zones while maintaining accurate prayer times based on the user's location. If there is a recommended library, calculation method, or alternative approach that you have seen other applications use, please let me know.

Also, could you please share the pricing details for the premium API hosting, including the available plans, request limits, and any other relevant limitations?

We would like to evaluate the available options and choose the most suitable approach for our application.
Thanks for your guidance.

meezaan

raman10 If you can use a library locally - that is probably best. The AlAdhan API itself is built on https://packagist.org/packages/islamic-network/prayer-times - but this restricts you to PHP. Also, like this library, others will be missing things like automatically calculating the method or timezone and will almost certainly lack geocoding (this last one is only relevant if you calculate timings from address strings or city names). There are also other adjustments that live in the API, and upcoming features like country / region specific prayer times based on published timings by government authorities will also not be available in the library itself (because of complexity of handling data, not for any other reason).

There are other prayer times API these days too, although I have not used them.

Caching also remains an option, but it's only really an option if you are displaying times for a specific set of co-ordinates pinned to one or a handful of configuration parameters.

There's also the option of moving away from Digital Ocean, or running a proxy at another provider to proxy requests to the API (although this makes for bad architecture).

Premium hosting begins at US $ 100 per month per region - you'll be issued with a dedicated URL. Each region rate limited to 50 requests per second and can be whitelisted to your IP or protected via API keys, etc and has an uptime SLA. If this becomes of interest, please open a support ticket for more details.

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