Just playing with tweepy / twitter api and apilimits. This example gets the user_timeline remaining.

apilimts.py

# how to check api limits with tweeepy
#http://tweepy.readthedocs.org/

import tweepy                               # pip install tweepy
import time

# Consumer keys and access tokens, used for OAuth
consumer_key = ''
consumer_secret = ''
access_token = ''
access_token_secret = ''

# OAuth process, using the keys and tokens
auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)

api = tweepy.API(auth)

#print full text
#print(limits)

while True:
	print('')
	print(time.strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S", time.localtime(time.time())))

	try:
		limits = api.rate_limit_status()
		#for usertime line api limits -- typicaly 150 hits per 15mins
		usertimeline_remain = limits['resources']['statuses']['/statuses/user_timeline']['remaining']
		usertimeline_limit = limits['resources']['statuses']['/statuses/user_timeline']['limit']
		usertimeline_time = limits['resources']['statuses']['/statuses/user_timeline']['reset']
		usertimeline_time_local = time.strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S", time.localtime(usertimeline_time))
		print('Twitter API: remain: %s / limit: %s - reseting at: %s' %(usertimeline_remain, usertimeline_limit, usertimeline_time_local))
		print('response: %s' % (getattr(api, 'last_response', None))) #just get the response, 429 = rate limit exceeded / https://dev.twitter.com/overview/api/response-codes

	except:
		print('nope couldn\'t get them')
		print('response: %s' % (getattr(api, 'last_response', None))) #just get the response, 429 = rate limit exceeded / https://dev.twitter.com/overview/api/response-codes
		print(limits)
		
	time.sleep(30)