Building a Rate Limiter in Java & Spring Boot for Microservices

Modern distributed systems and APIs often face a common challenge: handling too many requests from clients. Without protection, a sudden surge in traffic can overload servers, cause downtime, or degrade performance. This is where Rate Limiting becomes essential. In this article, I will explain how I built a lightweight and extensible Rate Limiter using Java and Spring Boot that supports multiple rate-limiting strategies for microservices and APIs. 🔗 Project Repository Source Code: [ https://github.com/milanmandal-1/Rate-Limiter ] What is Rate Limiting? Rate limiting is a technique used to control the number of requests a client can send to a server within a specific time period. It helps to: Prevent API abuse Protect backend services Improve system stability Ensure fair resource usage Many large platforms like Google, Amazon, and Netflix rely heavily on rate limiting to maintain reliability. Technologies Used This project uses modern backend technologies: Java Spring Boot Microservices