API Rate Limiting & Throttling
Learn how rate limiting protects APIs from abuse, brute force, and denial of service, and how to implement token-bucket and sliding-window strategies.
Why Rate Limiting?
Rate limiting caps how many requests a client can make in a time window. It protects APIs from brute-force attacks, scraping, accidental loops, and denial-of-service.
It is a key control listed under API security best practices.
Throttling vs Limiting
Rate limiting rejects requests over a hard cap; throttling slows them down (queuing or delaying) instead of rejecting outright. Both manage load and abuse, often used together.
All lessons in this course
- Designing Secure RESTful APIs
- GraphQL API Security
- Preventing SSRF Attacks
- API Rate Limiting & Throttling