Why and how you should rate-limit your API

Rate limiting is essential for managing API traffic, ensuring stability, controlling costs, and protecting against abuse. It involves limiting the number of requests within a specific period (e.g., 100 requests per minute). Various policies, such as fixed window, sliding window, token bucket, and leaky bucket, can be used. Implementing rate limiting correctly is complex and depends on factors like whether it's at the proxy or application level. A practical implementation using Go and Redis employs the leaky bucket policy and provides examples of how to set up and monitor the service.