Rate limiting and abuse protection
Comes up in: Backend design
This concept is being written. It gets the full five steps — explanation, predict, interview angle, practice with tests, and review cards. Here is exactly what it will cover, so you can study it elsewhere in the meantime.
What it covers
- token bucket, leaky bucket, fixed/sliding window
- per-user/IP/key limits
- distributed rate limiting
- returning 429 with
Retry-After - bots and CAPTCHAs/Turnstile
Words you will know
What you will practise
- design an API rate limiter
Interview questions this answers
- Design a rate limiter for a public API.