# Rate Limits

> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.redpanda.com/llms.txt). Component-specific: [cloud-data-platform-full.txt](https://docs.redpanda.com/cloud-data-platform-full.txt)

---
title: Rate Limits
latest-operator-version: v26.1.4
latest-console-tag: v3.7.3
latest-connect-version: 4.93.0
latest-redpanda-tag: v26.1.9
docname: connect/components/rate_limits/about
page-component-name: cloud-data-platform
page-version: master
page-component-version: master
page-component-title: Cloud
page-relative-src-path: connect/components/rate_limits/about.adoc
page-edit-url: https://github.com/redpanda-data/cloud-docs/edit/main/modules/develop/pages/connect/components/rate_limits/about.adoc
page-git-created-date: "2024-09-09"
page-git-modified-date: "2026-05-26"
---

<!-- Source: https://docs.redpanda.com/cloud-data-platform/develop/connect/components/rate_limits/about.md -->

A rate limit is a strategy for limiting the usage of a shared resource across parallel components in a Redpanda Connect instance, or potentially across multiple instances. They are configured as a resource:

```yaml
rate_limit_resources:
  - label: foobar
    local:
      count: 500
      interval: 1s
```

And most components that hit external services have a field `rate_limit` for specifying a rate limit resource to use, identified by the `label` field. For example, if we wanted to use our `foobar` rate limit with a `http_client` input it would look like this:

```yaml
input:
  http_client:
    url: TODO
    verb: GET
    rate_limit: foobar
```

By using a rate limit in this way we can guarantee that our input will only poll our HTTP source at the rate of 500 requests per second.

Some components don’t have a `rate_limit` field but we might still wish to throttle them by a rate limit, in which case we can use the [`rate_limit` processor](https://docs.redpanda.com/cloud-data-platform/develop/connect/components/processors/rate_limit/) that applies back pressure to a processing pipeline when the limit is reached.