Infrastructure Decisions · judgement tool
When should I add rate limiting?
When should I add rate limiting? Answer a few real conditions and get a Not yet / Probably yes / Yes-priority verdict — every factor tagged official fact, calculation, StackSays rule or estimate. No fabricated industry threshold.
A judgement tool, not a tool ranking · thresholds are StackSays rules, not industry standards · official facts verified 2026-07-17 · share the URL to share your answers
Your situation
The recommendation updates as you answer. Share the URL to share it.
Recommendation
Probably yes
Based on the factors you set — 1 pushing toward adopting, 0 against.
Why yes
- +18 Auth endpoints — Rate/attempt limiting on auth flows is a documented control against brute-force and credential stuffing (OWASP)official fact
When to reassess
Add limits to auth and paid-work endpoints early; extend to the rest when you expose public APIs or see abuse.
Minimal implementation
Start with the auth and most-abusable endpoints. A fixed-window or token-bucket limit backed by a fast store (e.g. Upstash) or your gateway is enough — no need to limit everything at once.
Risk of not doing it
Credential-stuffing/brute-force exposure and runaway cost from abusive traffic on paid downstreams.
Cost & complexity once adopted
Low for a few endpoints; a shared store (or platform/gateway feature) and a key strategy (per-IP vs per-user) are the main decisions.
This is a judgement tool, not a leaderboard. The StackSays rule and StackSays estimate factors are StackSays logic and opinion; the official fact factors link to official sources below. No industry-standard threshold is implied — the answer is driven by the conditions you set.
Official facts cited
| Source | Verified |
|---|---|
| OWASP — rate limiting / DoS controls | 2026-07-18 |
| MDN — HTTP 429 Too Many Requests (official) | 2026-07-18 |
Only the factors tagged “official fact” rest on these sources; rules and estimates are StackSays logic and are labeled as such.