Rate Limiting Explained: How to Protect APIs from Traffic Abuse

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Rate limiting is a technique that controls how many requests a client can make to an API within a defined time window, preventing overload, cost spikes, and unfair usage. Without it, a single misconfigured client or malicious script can exhaust backend resources, as illustrated by a real incident where thousands of requests per second pushed database CPU to 100%. The three core concepts involved are the request limit, the time window, and the client identifier, typically an IP address or API key. Common implementation strategies include the fixed window counter, the sliding window log, and the token bucket algorithm, each with different trade-offs in accuracy and memory efficiency. When a client exceeds the allowed threshold, the server responds with HTTP status 429 Too Many Requests, signaling that the limit has been reached.

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