Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Distributed Rate Limiter – 50K+ RPS, Redis-Backed, Production-Ready

Hi HN! I built a distributed rate limiter using the token bucket algorithm with Redis backing. Key highlights: • 50,000+ requests&#x2F;second throughput with <2ms P95 latency • Redis-backed distributed state for multi-instance deployments • 18 REST API endpoints for rate limiting, config, and monitoring • 265+ tests including load tests and integration tests • Docker&#x2F;Kubernetes ready with comprehensive documentation Built with Java 21 + Spring Boot. Perfect for protecting APIs, microservices, or SaaS platforms from abuse. The pain point I solved: existing solutions were either too…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1. 1
   Bucket4J▲77

   Rate-limiting based on token bucket algorithm for Java

   2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Rately▲175

   Take control of your API traffic with custom rate limits.

   2025 · its alternatives →

3. 3
   Golimit – Ringpop-based distributed and decentralized rate limiter▲53

   Golimit is Uber ringpop based distributed and decentralized rate limiter - myntra/golimit

   2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

4. 4
   Run globally distributed full-stack apps on high-performance MicroVMs▲98

   Hi HN! We’re Yann, Edouard, and Bastien from Koyeb (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.koyeb.com&#x2F;). We’re building a platform to let you deploy full-stack apps on high-performance hardware around the world, with zero configuration. We provide a “global serverless feeling”, without the hassle of re-writing all your apps or managing k8s complexity [1]. We built Scaleway, a cloud service provider where we designed ARM servers and provided them as cloud servers. During our time there, we saw customers struggle with the same issues while trying to deploy full-stack applications and APIs resiliently. As…

   2023 · koyeb.com · its alternatives →

5. 5
   Limitd – simple daemon for rate limiting HA applications▲15

   simple daemon for rate limit. Contribute to limitd/limitd development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   Redis-cell, an API rate limiter as a Redis module, written in Rust▲15

   A Redis module that provides rate limiting in Redis as a single command. - brandur/redis-cell

   2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

7. 7AB
   A bi-directional, persisted KV store that is faster than Redis▲79

   we've been working on a KV store for the past year or so which is 2-6x faster than Redis (benchmark link below) yet disk persisted! so you get the speed of in-memory KV stores but with disk persistence. To achieve this we've created our custom filesystem that is optimized for our special usecase and we're doing smart batching for writes and predictive fetching for reads. In addition to basic operations, it also provides atomic inc&#x2F;dec, atomic json patch, range scans and a unique key monitoring mechanism (pub-sub) over WebSockets which essentially allows you to receive notification on…

   2025 · hpkv.io · its alternatives →

8. 8RA
   RateLimitAPI – API for rate limiting in distributed environments▲5

   2023 · ratelimitapi.com · its alternatives →

9. 9
   We built a managed Kubernetes provider at half the cost of AWS▲25

   Since there’s a few discussions recently on $4 VPSes we thought you might be interested in Symbiosis, a cheaper and simpler managed k8s provider. Supported features include external LBs, encrypted+replicated storage and autoscaler. Infrastructure can be managed with UI, CLI, Terraform or Pulumi. Control planes are free of charge and a 1vCPU&#x2F;2GB node goes for $6 per month. We’re live in Germany right now and we’re expanding into US during 2023. Feel free to try it out and leave a comment.

   2023 · symbiosis.host · its alternatives →

10. 10AU
    A usage circuit breaker for Cloudflare Workers▲29

    I run 3mins.news (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;3mins.news), an AI news aggregator built entirely on Cloudflare Workers. The backend has 10+ cron triggers running every few minutes: RSS fetching, article clustering, LLM calls, email delivery. The problem: Workers Paid Plan has hard monthly limits (10M requests, 1M KV writes, 1M queue ops, etc.). There's no built-in "pause when you hit the limit", CF just starts billing overages. KV writes cost $5&#x2F;M over the cap, so a retry loop bug can get expensive fast. AWS has Budget Alerts, but those are passive notifications, by the time you read the email,…

    Mar 2026 · its alternatives →

11. 11
    A distributed workflow engine written in Go▲9

    I'd like to share a project I've been working on for the past few months. It's a distributed workflow engine written entirely in Go. Some highlights: * Tasks are executed in a Docker container * Can run stand-alone or distributed * Highly extensible * Able to enforce limits (CPU&#x2F;RAM) per task * Web UI Would love the get your feedback on it, and find out if this could be useful.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

12. 12
    I audited 500 K8s pods. Java wastes ~48% RAM, Go ~18%▲36

    Kubernetes cost optimization - catch expensive resource changes before they merge - WozzHQ/wozz

    Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

13. 13
    RateLimit.Org▲6

    Avoid 429 error by limiting requests made per time frame

    2023 · ratelimit.org · its alternatives →

14. 14RL
    Rate limiting, caching and request prioritization for AI apps▲10

    Generative AI applications pose a unique challenge in production. They are computationally intensive and orders of magnitude slower than traditional data-intensive applications. Scaling these applications is further complicated by expensive hardware requirements and GPU shortages. Consequently, developers are scrambling to implement home-grown caching and rate-limiting solutions, which are error-prone and difficult to get right. FluxNinja Aperture delivers a production-grade experience with a purpose-built load management platform that provides rate & concurrency limiting, caching, and…

    2024 · fluxninja.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Rate Limiting by Cloudflare▲6

    Protect against DDoS and other types of abusive behavior

    2017 · cloudflare.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    ReliableGPT run 200 GPT-4 requests in parallel▲14

    reliableGPT handles GPT-4 429 rate limit errors it optimally allocate jobs for incoming requests to maximize usage of Requests&#x2F;min and Token&#x2F;min limits

    2023 · colab.research.google.com · its alternatives →

17. 17
    We built a <60ms, open-source alternative to E2B using RustVMM and KVM▲7

    Over the past few months, as we scaled our internal AI Agents, we hit a dead end: Running LLM-generated arbitrary code in Docker is basically running naked on security due to container escape risks. But using full traditional VMs takes minutes to boot and eats too much memory to support high-density concurrency. We loved the developer experience of SaaS sandboxes on the market, but they are closed-source, expensive, and have too high a barrier to entry for self-hosting. So, our team decided to build our own. After months of grinding, using RustVMM and KVM, we built a blazing-fast,…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

18. 18NB
    New BucketRateLimiter Python package to rate limit requests to APIs▲25

    2022 · pypi.org · its alternatives →

19. 19
    Cuts Long Horizon Inference Costs by 50% via external KV Cache Offload▲22

    Hey HN, we’re the developers of OpenLake, an open source storage engine for offloading LLM KV caches from GPU memory into a shared tier of RAM and NVMe. We built OpenLake because KV caches are outgrowing GPU memory. A single 256K token conversation on Gemma 4 31B produces approximately 43GB of KV state, more than half the memory of an 80GB H100. The problem becomes even harder across a cluster: a prefix cached on one GPU host is unavailable when the next request lands on a different GPU, forcing the new GPU to repeat work the fleet has already completed. Once the KV cache is offloaded,…

    Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    Snapser launches its FREE Starter plan! ▲15

    Hi HN — I’m AJ, Co-founder of Snapser. We built a modular backend for apps&#x2F;games with an “own cluster” feel (strong isolation), implemented on Kubernetes namespaces under the hood. Today we’re launching our free Starter Tier. Highlights: • 33 “Snaps” (Auth, Storage, Leaderboards, Analytics, A&#x2F;B Tests, etc.) • Bring your own containerized services (any language) • Your own isolated environment (namespaces + bin-packing + auto-scaling) • Starter Tier: 1 dev cluster, 2 admin seats, 5 Snaps free, no credit card What we learned: isolation over giant shared control planes; smart…

    2025 · snapser.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    A simple pricing and resource limit library▲5

    Hey Hacker News! No one likes to code pricing; it sucks. It shouldn't take up my time, yet it always does - too much of it. And pricing always needs to change, eating up valuable dev hours. I created a simple pricing engine so that I could write all of my pricing rules & resource limits in a single YAML doc, then enforce them everywhere with a single policy check. It's simple, intuitive, versionable, auditable, and easy to reason about or change quickly without bogging my development down. My CTO friends liked the idea and wanted to use it, so I created this open-source library for everyone…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    An unmetered LLM API–$6/month, no token tracking, no limits▲12

    Hi HN, I was once given the advice: Don't waste expensive frontier model credits (GPT&#x2F;Claude&#x2F;etc.) on bulk work. Send the boring, repetitive, high-volume jobs to a smaller model, and save the expensive prompts for when you actually need frontier-level reasoning. I complained and told my manager that I shouldnt have to think about using certain models for certain coding tasks, and that one model should handle everything. Well, here we are anyway. If anyone needs a place to absolutely abuse an LLM with high-volume tasks, come beat ours up at https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yolo-auto.com. Here are…

    Jul 2026 · yolo-auto.com · its alternatives →

23. 23EA
    Ebbflow – A Multi-Cloud Load Balancer and SSH Proxy. Host from Anywhere▲7

    2020 · ebbflow.io · its alternatives →

24. 24RT
    Rx, the Deploy-as-you-save client for the cloud▲8

    rx is a lightweight CLI and runtime that lets you deploy any function instantly as you save it in your editor. It’s fast, simple, and takes care of setting up all your cloud infrastructure. The best dev experience with everything you need built-in: - auth - permissions - payments - secrets - storage - logs - email & SMS - and way more Related beta launch tweet: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;KhalidZoabi&#x2F;status&#x2F;1777673531972608249 Wanted to show it to you guys, gauge interest, and get some feedback. There's a large roadmap of upcoming stuff. Feel free to DM me on X for more information!

    2024 · rx.run · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →