Have you ever wondered what happens when someone sends hundreds of requests to your login endpoint within a few seconds?

Without rate limiting, your application could face unnecessary database queries, excessive server load, brute-force login attempts, or API abuse.

Rate limiting helps control how frequently a client can access an endpoint within a specified time window.

The good news is that Rails provides a built-in rate_limit method, so you don't always need an additional gem to implement basic rate limiting.

Rails 8.1 also introduces a useful improvement: the scope: option, which allows multiple controllers to share the same rate-limit counter.

Let’s understand how it works with practical examples.

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