Skip to content

Rate limiting, explained Explained

Three ways APIs stay fair under load: the token bucket, the sliding window and the 429 Retry-After backoff dance, each shown as a live animated diagram.

Animated diagrams · 3 flows

Compare all 3

Sort by any column to find the right fit. Click a name to open its details.

429 + Retry-AfterReject, wait, retryper retrygrows with each retryHTTPLowPolite clients and API SDKs
Sliding WindowRequests in, oldest outper requestcount plus prunetimestamp logMediumStrict, exact quotas
Token BucketTokens out, refill inper requestone counter checkin-memory counterLowAPIs that must allow bursts