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Rate Limiting

Protect your APIs from abuse and your origin from being overwhelmed

Cloudflare Rate Limiting allows you to define granular thresholds for requests to your application and automatically block or log clients that exceed those limits.

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Performance and Accuracy at Scale

Our rate limiting happens at Cloudflare's edge, across 335+ cities. We can block excessive traffic before it ever touches your origin server, saving you bandwidth and compute resources.

Rich, Flexible Rules Engine

Define limits based on a wide range of characteristics beyond just IP address, such as specific HTTP headers, query parameters, or even the result of a WAF check.

Cost-Effectiveness

Simple, predictable pricing that is often far lower than a DIY solution, especially when factoring in your saved origin costs.

Edge-based traffic control and abuse prevention

Rate Limiting protects your applications and APIs from abuse, downtime, and cost overruns caused by excessive request rates from malicious bots or misbehaving clients. It gives you precise control over your application's traffic, allowing you to protect your origin servers, ensure availability for legitimate users, and prevent unexpected infrastructure costs.

Background Pattern
Rate Limiting

Perfect for Traffic Control