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How to implement rate limiting in a Python FastAPI REST API?

๐Ÿ‘€ Views: 51 ๐Ÿ’ฌ Answers: 1 ๐Ÿ“… Created: 2025-09-17
fastapi api ratelimit redis Python

I tried several approaches but none seem to work. This might be a silly question, but Currently developing a REST API using FastAPI for a client project, and I want to ensure that we implement rate limiting to protect our endpoints from abuse... I've done some research and found a few different libraries like `slowapi` and `fastapi-limiter`. However, Iโ€™m unsure which one would be the best fit for a production environment. Iโ€™ve tried setting up `slowapi` as follows: ```python from slowapi import Limiter from fastapi import FastAPI limiter = Limiter(key_func=lambda request: request.client.host) app = FastAPI() @app.get("/items") @limiter.limit("5/minute") def read_items(): return {"message": "This is a rate-limited endpoint."} ``` This code seems straightforward, but Iโ€™m worried about how it behaves under a high load where multiple clients are hitting the endpoint simultaneously. Additionally, Iโ€™ve noticed that the `slowapi` documentation mentions that it defaults to in-memory storage for rate limit data, which seems risky for a distributed application. Iโ€™ve also explored `fastapi-limiter`, which uses Redis for storage, making it potentially more suitable for our architecture. I attempted to set it up like this: ```python from fastapi import FastAPI from fastapi_limiter import FastAPILimiter app = FastAPI() @app.on_event("startup") async def startup(): await FastAPILimiter.init() @app.get("/data") @limiter.limit("10/minute") def get_data(): return {"data": "This endpoint is limited!"} ``` However, I ran into an issue while trying to configure the Redis connection, receiving a `ConnectionError` stating that it couldn't connect to the Redis server. For context, weโ€™re using Docker to run our services, and the Redis container is set up in the same network. Here's part of my `docker-compose.yml`: ```yaml version: '3' services: redis: image: redis:latest ports: - "6379:6379" api: build: context: . depends_on: - redis networks: - app-network networks: app-network: driver: bridge ``` Can someone provide insight into how to effectively implement rate limiting with FastAPI? Should I stick with `slowapi`, or is `fastapi-limiter` the better choice? Also, what configurations should I check to resolve the connection issues with Redis? Any tips or best practices for a robust rate limiting setup would be appreciated. I'm working on a web app that needs to handle this. Has anyone else encountered this? I'm using Python stable in this project. What's the best practice here?