Detection & trust · glossary

Rate limiting

Rate limiting is a website's cap on how many requests an IP address, a session or an account may send in a period, enforced with HTTP 429 responses, delays or temporary blocks. Proxies help when the limit is per address: rotating across many exits turns a per-IP ceiling into a budget you control. They do not help when the limit is per account or per fingerprint, and they never excuse hammering a target.

1 min read Also called throttling, HTTP 429 Updated

Limits & fair use All terms

Where limits live#

  • Per IP: the most common. Residential rotation is the direct answer.
  • Per session or cookie: rotation does not help; pace the session.
  • Per account: nothing network-side helps; that is the site's business rule.
  • Per ASN or country: rare, but hosting ranges often get a lower ceiling than residential ones.

Polite defaults#

Spread requests over the day, keep a per-domain rate a human could plausibly generate per exit, back off on 429 with the Retry-After header, and cache what does not change. A pool is a way to be many polite visitors, not one impolite one.

How it works at ProxShift#

ProxShift gateways apply no request-rate limit and never return 429 themselves; only the destination does. Per-domain rates are the client's responsibility, and the acceptable use policy forbids attacks on any target.

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