Foursquare API limitation and design advice

Question

Foursquare encourages developers to use maximum caching before doing repetitive calls to Foursquare API in order not to extend hourly limit of usage (5000 requests / hour).

So, does it mean is it a bad idea to access Venues API directly from mobile app? Do we need to make our mobile app retrieve results from our server instead of calling Foursquare directly?

Thanks

Answer 1

Accessing Foursquare using your own servers as a proxy is generally encouraged. As you stated, it's better for caching, but also has the advantages of

1. being able to make changes quickly without waiting for an app submission (and can therefore propagate to all your users, even ones that don't actively upgrade)
2. ability to collect and aggregate information about call volume, errors, etc. more easily