fapi-limiter

Flexible rate limiting for FastAPI powered by pyrate-limiter.

This project is being developed with AI assistance (GitHub Copilot), but all code, design decisions, and implementation details are reviewed and validated by the author.

Installation

# pip
pip install fapi-limiter

# uv
uv add fapi-limiter

Usage

Middleware (app-wide)

Apply rate limiting to every request in the application.

from fastapi import FastAPI
from pyrate_limiter import Duration, Limiter, Rate

from fapi_limiter import DynamicBucketFactory, RateLimiterMiddleware, setup_inmemory_bucket

app = FastAPI()

limiter = Limiter(DynamicBucketFactory(setup_inmemory_bucket([Rate(10, Duration.MINUTE)])))
app.add_middleware(RateLimiterMiddleware, limiter=limiter)

Dependency (per-route)

Apply rate limiting to specific routes using FastAPI's dependency injection.

from fastapi import Depends, FastAPI
from pyrate_limiter import Duration, Limiter, Rate

from fapi_limiter import DynamicBucketFactory, RateLimiter, setup_inmemory_bucket

app = FastAPI()

limiter = Limiter(DynamicBucketFactory(setup_inmemory_bucket([Rate(10, Duration.MINUTE)])))


@app.get("/limited", dependencies=[Depends(RateLimiter(limiter))])
def limited():
    return {"ok": True}

SQLite backend (persistent, multi-process)

from fastapi import FastAPI
from pyrate_limiter import Duration, Limiter, Rate

from fapi_limiter import DynamicBucketFactory, RateLimiterMiddleware, setup_sqlite_bucket

app = FastAPI()

limiter = Limiter(
    DynamicBucketFactory(
        setup_sqlite_bucket(
            [Rate(10, Duration.MINUTE)],
            db_path="rate_limiter.db",
            use_file_lock=True,  # required when sharing across processes
        )
    )
)
app.add_middleware(RateLimiterMiddleware, limiter=limiter)

Redis backend

from fastapi import FastAPI
from pyrate_limiter import Duration, Limiter, Rate
from redis import Redis

from fapi_limiter import DynamicBucketFactory, RateLimiterMiddleware, setup_redis_bucket

app = FastAPI()

limiter = Limiter(
    DynamicBucketFactory(
        setup_redis_bucket([Rate(10, Duration.MINUTE)], redis=Redis(host="localhost"))
    )
)
app.add_middleware(RateLimiterMiddleware, limiter=limiter)

Response Headers

On every request, the following headers are set:

When the limit is exceeded, 429 Too Many Requests is returned and two additional headers are set:

Configuration

Both RateLimiterMiddleware and RateLimiter accept the same options:

RateLimiterMiddleware also accepts:

Custom Callback

The callback is invoked when a request is rate-limited. It receives the Request and a headers dict, and should raise an HTTPException:

from fastapi import HTTPException, Request
from fapi_limiter import RateLimiterMiddleware

def my_callback(request: Request, headers=None):
    raise HTTPException(status_code=429, detail="Slow down!", headers=headers)

app.add_middleware(RateLimiterMiddleware, limiter=limiter, callback=my_callback)

Custom Identifier

By default the identifier is {request_method}:{client_ip}:{path}. You can override it to key by user, API token, etc.:

def by_user(request: Request) -> str:
    return request.headers.get("X-User-Id", "anonymous") + ":" + request.url.path

app.add_middleware(RateLimiterMiddleware, limiter=limiter, identifier=by_user)

Skip Function

Use skip on RateLimiterMiddleware to bypass rate limiting for certain requests (e.g. health checks):

def skip_health(request: Request) -> bool:
    return request.url.path == "/health"

app.add_middleware(RateLimiterMiddleware, limiter=limiter, skip=skip_health)

Credits

• fastapi-limiter by long2ice
• requests-limiter by JWCook

License

MIT