API Rate Limiting Strategies That Don't Annoy Your Users
Every API needs rate limiting. Without it, one enthusiastic script kiddie or a bug in a client application can take down your entire service. The question isn’t whether to rate limit — it’s how to do it without making your API frustrating to use. The Naive Approach (And Why It Fails) 1 2 3 # Don't do this if requests_this_minute > 100: return 429, "Rate limit exceeded" Fixed limits per time window are simple to implement and almost always wrong. They create the “thundering herd” problem: all your users hit the limit at minute :00, back off, retry at :01, and create a synchronized spike that’s worse than no limit at all. ...