What is Rate Limiting / API Throttling? | System Design Concepts

API Throttling or Rate Limiting is a concept used to describe how applications control the amount of traffic their APIs support. Rate Limiting works but the server identifying clients, and applying an algorithm that keeps that caller's traffic below a certain threshold (i.e. 5 calls per second). In this video, I talk about what api throttling / rate limiting are, why applications rate limit, techniques, and implications.
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[@bernhardriegler5306]

Excellent explanation and hood pointers to existing libraries. Thank you!

[@HNVIDEOS]

Such an intelligent Engineer you are bro, best explanation ever.

[@BeABetterDev]

Thanks so much!

[@williamchan1858]

very clear explanation! Recently I need to dive into the details of API during my daily work. It really helps!

[@BeABetterDev]

Glad to hear you enjoyed, william! Thanks for your support.

[@Hrit]

Thanks for the clear explanation. Very beginner friendly.

[@adamfinan6981]

Excellent video !

[@kugurerdem]

The client perspective was especially helpful in my case. Thanks!

[@BeABetterDev]

You're very welcome!

[@jinny5025]

Your explanation is so clear to understand than ever. Please keep uploading system design videos. I just subscribed to your channel 👀

[@BeABetterDev]

Thanks Jenny! More to come! :) If theres any specific topic you're interested in a video on let me know and I can try to work it in. Daniel

[@chenzhuo9]

great content! thanks

[@bobcee8126]

Truly love this explanation!

[@BeABetterDev]

Thanks bob! Glad you enjoyed.

[@sulaymanmuhammedjawneh5937]

Great delivery. I enjoyed and benefitted from it

[@BeABetterDev]

Thanks Sulayman! Happy you enjoyed ;)

[@eshaangupta4101]

Great video.

[@srb1855]

Very helpful!👍

[@BeABetterDev]

Glad it was helpful!

[@dogigiri]

Great video

[@huscachafe]

Very useful ! Thx !

[@BeABetterDev]

You're welcome!

[@sandeepk9640]

Well explained to the point..

[@BeABetterDev]

Thanks Sandeep! Glad you enjoyed :)

[@jnsmith111]

I'm hitting a scenario where Azure is talking on the outbound too fast(too many times in a minute). As a result Azure's token will eventually fail\go into Quarantine mode. I see that I can limit rates on the inbound per most examples. So, I'd view this as limiting part of the roundtrip communication. Question- Does rate limiting allow me to stretch out the overall communication process to a longer period of time ? I'm syncing users to a Cloud based app. I'm trying to limit the updating\creating process to under 400 requests per minute. So, would applying the rate limiting on the inbound only slow down the overall process ? Is there a way to apply rate limiting on the outbound direction ?

[@vijayprasad4516]

Nice Video !!!

[@BeABetterDev]

Thanks vijay!

[@rajeshrenke6471]

7:56 it says bucket is empty and request coming in this time is going to be rejected. I didn’t quite catch that. If the bucket is empty it means it can accommodate 100 request, which is the size of the bucket, and should be served. Isn’t it. I want to know what am I missing?

[@ashutoshbang5836]

Nice video :)

[@BeABetterDev]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@raphael-okere]

Thank you

[@BeABetterDev]

You're very welcome Raphael!

[@shahamitsynygy]

Nice video. You have explained the concept very well. One question - Isn't this already handled by API management softwares/solutions along with other api management features? Also any plans to create a video on api management aspects?

[@rubenfranco7690]

Yep, you're right, that's what we use API gateways for. (AWS, NGINX, Kong, etc...)

[@spyderwon2573]

So i'm not clear what the different between rate limiting and throttling actually is. Are they interchangeable?

[@BeABetterDev]

Hi spyder, Throttling is a type of rate limiting. Here's a really good article by Google talking through a couple other types of Rate Limiting: cloud.google.com/architecture/rate-limiting-strategies-techniques Hope this helps.

[@malikbrahimi7504]

How do you deal with 3rd party rate limits in your own application? Do you have to just create a distributed system to keep retrying against the 3rd party API?

[@MauriceWilliams]

This was pretty awesome. I'm guessing that you know how to code as well?

[@gfboxp-]

I try to sign in coinbase pro this message shows what is this mean?? Wait tilland retry?? Please help.."Rate limited have been exceeded,please try again in the moment.This error occurs when you exceeded number of allowed requests our backend over a certain time period.

[@lifeonwheels9802]

Hi, I got the same message as you. I think but not 100% sure, but I tried to install a new account or coin to my ledger nano x. Well, it appeared on my device but not on coinbase. So I deleted it off the device and tried again and the samething happened, so I repeated it again, I think 3 or 4 times and just gave up. So the next time I tried to sign in. I got the same message as you did. Maybe the install shows on the wallet immediately and on coinbase pro it may have been delayed an hour or a day for it to show that the app installed. Maybe I jumped the gun and requested the same app 3 or 4 times. So now it's been 2 day already that I'm locked 🔒 out of my account. I'll wait a couple more days to see if I can sign in. But I don't know. It's the only thing I can think of, that I made to many requests to install the same app. Please let me know if you may have made similar requests. Thank bro. Hope you got back into your account. Be well.

[@bhanuchirutha]

i dont understand