LESSON 3.2
Rate limiting
Learn key techniques and workflows in System Design Foundations.
7m
intermediate
9,422 students
Overview
Rate limiting protects you from clients and clients from themselves. Token bucket is the usual answer; the hard part is the key you limit on.
In this lesson you will:
- Implement token bucket and sliding window limits
- Choose the right key: user, tenant, or IP
- Return limits and retry hints in the response
Pro Tip
Use caching and revalidation wisely to ensure your app stays fast and data remains fresh without unnecessary requests.