Meaning
A safeguard restriction placed on an API or network to control how many requests a user or client can submit within a specific timeframe.
Three examples from work
API consumption
DevWe hit the OpenAI rate limit of three thousand requests per minute.
LeadImplement exponential backoff and jitter on all retries immediately.
Security hardening
Security EngineerDid you add a rate limit to the login endpoint to prevent brute-force attacks?
Backend DevYes, requests are capped at five attempts per minute per IP address.
Client integration
ClientOur batch export job received HTTP 429 Too Many Requests.
SupportPlease inspect the RateLimit-Reset header in the response to throttle your workers.
Can be a noun ('hit a rate limit') or verb ('rate-limit users'). The standard response for exceeding limits is HTTP 429 Too Many Requests.