Another big way to reduce impact on your rate-limit (at least with Github) is conditional requests. If-None-Match / If-Modified-Since and using the E-Tag heade

Another big way to reduce impact on your rate-limit (at least with Github) is conditional requests. If-None-Match / If-Modified-Since and using the E-Tag header. If the resources have not been modified, or doesn't match that revision it won't count towards your limit.