Public APIs face unpredictable traffic from diverse clients and automation. Without rate limiting, spikes can exhaust resources and degrade service for everyone. Effective strategies balance protection with fairness, allowing legitimate usage while deterring abuse. Designing limits around real workloads prevents brittle rules that block valid users during growth or campaigns.
Policy Design
Tiered quotas align limits with customer value and plans. Burst allowances accommodate short spikes without penalizing steady clients. Clear error responses help developers recover gracefully.
Implementation Patterns
Token buckets and leaky buckets smooth traffic. Distributed rate limiting requires consistent counters and low-latency storage to avoid false positives.
Operational Tuning
Dashboards track throttling rates and client impact. Regular reviews evolve policies as usage patterns change.
