Why Rate Limiting Matters Modern APIs often serve thousands or even millions of requests every minute. Without limits, this can quickly lead to problems: Abuse: a single client may flood the API with many requests. Noisy neighbor: one misbehaving user can negatively affect everyone else. Unpredictable load: sudden traffic spikes may overwhelm backend services. Rate limiting is the standard solution to these issues. By restricting how many requests a client can make in a given time window, we protect the reliability and fairness of our system. ...