Copper API vs SugarAI (SugarCRM)

Copper API

Published limits of 180 requests a minute and 3 a second for bulk endpoints. No official MCP server, OpenAPI spec or llms.txt.

SugarAI (SugarCRM)

The REST reference covers 350 endpoint pages with filters, field selection, bulk calls and upsert by sync_key. SugarAI's AI Supplemental Terms forbid connecting a customer's or third party's AI agent or MCP connector to the APIs unless Sugar has approved it, tokens carry no scopes, and no OpenAPI file, trial or SLA was found.

Copper API

1. Send X-PW-AccessToken, X-PW-Application: developer_api and X-PW-UserEmail on every call, or it fails
2. Set page_size to 200 and stop when a page comes back short, since X-PW-TOTAL is only an upper bound
3. Back off on 429 on your own clock, since no Retry-After is documented
4. Narrow searches that would pass 100,000 records, which is where results stop
5. Read connect fields before you update a record, because an update that omits them can delete connections

SugarAI (SugarCRM)

1. Confirm that Sugar has approved the agent integration before connecting. The AI Supplemental Terms forbid unapproved AI agents and MCP connectors on the APIs
2. POST to /rest/v11_27/oauth2/token with grant_type password and a platform other than base, mobile or portal, or the login can end the user's own session
3. Send the access token in the OAuth-Token header. It lasts 60 minutes by default, so store the refresh token and not the password
4. Stay under 20 requests a second on SugarCloud and reuse one session for batches. Over-limit traffic is blocked by IP address until support lifts it
5. Page with max_num and offset until next_offset is -1, and pass fields to keep responses small
6. Use PATCH /integrate/:module/:sync_key_field_name/:sync_key_field_value for writes that may be retried, since it inserts or updates by sync_key