Control & safety
Safety & limits
SnipeBid is built to behave carefully. Here is exactly how it paces itself, and what you can control.
One request at a time
Every request SnipeBid sends to EA (searches, buys, bids, listings, watchlist checks) goes through one queue. Requests are sent one at a time, spaced like a person, capped per minute, and frozen completely during a cooldown. Delays are random inside a range, and now and then one is stretched further, like a person getting distracted.
Paces
Pick a pace in Settings → Safety. The default is Aggressive.
| Timing | Safe | Normal | Aggressive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pause before the next search | 7–14 s | 4.5–9 s | 3–6 s |
| “Reading the results” before a bid (and a Human buy) | 1.4–2.8 s | 0.95–1.9 s | 0.65–1.3 s |
| Minimum gap between any two requests | 1.8–3.4 s | 1.2–2.4 s | 0.85–1.7 s |
| Minimum gap between two bids | 4–8 s | 2.8–5.5 s | 2–3.8 s |
| Max requests per minute | 10 | 15 | 22 |
| Short break | every 5–9 min, for 45–150 s | every 7–12 min, for 30–100 s | every 9–15 min, for 20–70 s |
| Long break | every 35–55 min, for 8–16 min | every 45–70 min, for 6–12 min | every 60–90 min, for 4–8 min |
The Buy Now reaction (Human, Fast, Turbo) is set separately; see Sniper.
Warm-up
SnipeBid always uses the Safe timings for a while, whatever pace you picked:
- the first 3 minutes after you press Start,
- 2 minutes after a long break,
- 4 minutes after an EA cooldown ends,
- 3 minutes after reconnecting to an expired session.
Breaks
Short and long breaks come at irregular times (see the table). During a break the panel shows a countdown ring; press Skip to end it early.
Search limits per hour and per day
| Setting | Default | When it’s reached |
|---|---|---|
| Max searches / hour | 600 | SnipeBid pauses (Hourly limit) and resumes as soon as the oldest search of the last hour ages out. |
| Max searches / day | 2,500 | The bot stops with daily search cap reached. The count resets at your local midnight. |
Both limits count every browser and computer running SnipeBid on the same EA account: each browser reports its searches to your SnipeBid account every 30 seconds and gets the totals back. If the searches were made in another browser, the hourly pause waits 5 minutes and checks again.
Spend limits
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Session spend limit | 0 (no limit) | Stops the bot (spend limit reached) before a buy would take this run’s spending over the limit. |
| Keep at least | 0 | Never buys or bids below this coin balance. |
| Max coins in bids (%) | 100 | How much of your coins may be tied up in bids. See Bidder. |
When EA pushes back: cooldowns
When EA answers with a rate limit or a temporary market lock, SnipeBid stops sending anything until a cooldown ends. The panel shows 🛡️ EA cooldown with a countdown.
| EA’s answer | 1st time | 2nd | 3rd and later |
|---|---|---|---|
| Too many requests / rate limited (HTTP 426, 429) | 3 min | 10 min | 30 min |
| Market temporarily locked, “soft ban” (HTTP 512, 521) | Cooldown setting (15 min) | × 2 (30 min) | × 4 (60 min) |
The repeat count resets after an hour without any push-back. Cooldown after a block in Settings → Safety sets the base time for market locks. After a cooldown SnipeBid eases back in at the Safe pace.
Three blocks in two hours: stopped for today
If EA rate-limits or locks the market 3 times within 2 hours, SnipeBid doesn’t keep coming back for more. It stops with EA blocked the market 3 times in 2 hours — stopped until tomorrow and rests until your local midnight. If you press Start before then, SnipeBid warns you that starting again today makes a longer market ban more likely and only starts if you choose Start anyway.
Safety pause and safety stop
SnipeBid checks every answer EA sends. The everyday ones are expected: success, “already sold”, “bid too low”, “no coins”, an expired session, rate limits and market locks (those have their own handling above). Anything else is unusual: errors like HTTP 400, 403, 404, 460 or 500, timeouts, network errors, and answers that are missing the data SnipeBid needs (for example a search result without any listings field), which usually means EA changed something.
| What happens | What SnipeBid does |
|---|---|
| 5 unusual answers within 5 minutes, or 3 in a row with the same error on the same kind of request | Safety pause: sends nothing to EA for 10 minutes. The panel shows 🛡️ Safety pause with the reason, for example unusual EA errors (HTTP 460 on search), and a countdown. Afterwards it eases back in at the Safe pace. SnipeBid also checks right away whether we paused that feature. |
| A second safety pause within an hour | Safety stop: the bot stops with Safety stop: EA keeps returning errors (…). SnipeBid stopped to protect your account. Your phone alert for stops fires if you set one up. |
The fuse also protects what you start by hand. If it trips while the pack sorter, bulk listing, won-items handling or an SBC batch is running, that job stops at its next card with the same message. Try again once the 10 minutes are over.
Verification (captcha)
If EA asks for a verification check (HTTP 458), SnipeBid stops; it never tries to solve it. Open Transfers in the web app, run one search by hand, solve the check, then press Start again.
Session expired
If EA says the session expired, SnipeBid pauses and checks again after about 20 seconds, 1 minute and then every 2 minutes. It resumes at a gentle pace once the session works. After 10 minutes without a session it stops and asks you to reload the web app, log in and press Start.
Features paused for an EA change
If EA changes something that makes a feature misbehave, we can pause that one feature for every SnipeBid user within minutes, until an update fixes it. You see a banner in the panel, such as Paused while we fix an EA change: sniper. Back soon., and a running bot stops at its next step (in Both mode, the half that isn’t paused keeps going). It turns back on by itself.
This is a simple on/off switch per feature, checked every 10 minutes, and every 2 minutes while the bot runs. It never runs code from our server, and if our server can’t be reached, everything stays on. See Troubleshooting.
Paused automatically
A feature can also be paused without waiting for us. When several SnipeBid users get the same unusual EA error on the same kind of request within a few minutes (or several hit a safety pause at once), our server pauses the features that use those requests for everyone. The banner then reads Paused automatically: unusual EA errors while we check an EA change. It will be back soon. We are alerted at the same moment, check what EA changed and turn the feature back on; it never switches itself back on without that check.
When EA updates the web app
Some features (the SBC solver, the pack sorter, prices on cards) work through parts of EA’s web app. When the web app loads, SnipeBid checks that those parts are still there. If one is missing, only the feature that needs it pauses on your computer, with EA changed the web app; the SBC solver is paused until SnipeBid is updated. in the Log. Our server also notices when a new version of EA’s web app appears; if it changed the parts SnipeBid relies on, the sniper, the bidder and the affected features are paused for everyone until we have checked the new version.
Anonymous error reports
Send anonymous error reports (Settings → Safety, on by default) helps us notice EA changes fast. When SnipeBid hits an error in its own code, or an unusual EA error, it sends:
- the feature (for example sniper or SBC solver), a short error message and the error code,
- how often it happened and when, and your SnipeBid version.
Messages are cleaned before they leave your browser: no coin amounts, item or card ids, emails, license keys or EA account names. Normal trading answers such as “already sold” or “outbid” are not reported. Reports are grouped and sent at most every 5 minutes, and right away after a safety pause. Along with them, once per visit, goes the version number of EA’s web app and which of the web app parts SnipeBid uses are present, so we see EA updates as they roll out. Turn the switch off and nothing is sent.
Lower-risk setup
- Pace Safe or Normal, reaction Human or Fast.
- Lower Max searches / hour and / day well under the defaults.
- Set a Session spend limit and Keep at least.
- Keep breaks on (don’t skip them all), and run in shorter sessions.
- Use a secondary account.
- New to SnipeBid? The 🛡️ Safe beginner starting setup sets most of this in one click.
SnipeBid is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Electronic Arts Inc. EA SPORTS FC and Ultimate Team are trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc.