---
id: ratelimit
version: "2.2.1"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# ratelimit — API rate limit decorator

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 12.7M/mo

## What it is and what it does

ratelimit is a simple decorator-based rate limiter for Python functions that make API calls. It enforces a maximum number of function invocations within a specified time period (defaulting to 15 minutes), raising a RateLimitException when the quota is exceeded. This helps prevent applications from violating API provider rate limits and getting banned.

The package provides two strategies for handling rate-limit violations: raising an exception (which you can catch and retry), or using the sleep_and_retry decorator to automatically pause the current thread until the time window resets before retrying. It has no runtime dependencies and works by wrapping any function with a simple @limits(calls=N, period=seconds) decorator.

Use it for:

- Wrap API client functions to enforce a 15 minute rate limit or any custom quota without manual tracking
- Combine with retry logic to implement automatic retry when rate limits are hit
- Ensure background jobs or data-sync tasks respect API provider rate limits without explicit delay management
- Protect against accidental API abuse by adding a decorator to functions that call rate-limited endpoints

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

A function decorator that enforces rate limits on API calls, raising an exception or sleeping to prevent exceeding a specified call quota within a time window.

Yes, with caution. The package is simple, stable, and solves a real problem for API-heavy applications. However, the lack of updates since 2018-12-17 is a significant concern—verify compatibility with your Python version before relying on it in production. For straightforward rate-limiting needs, this remains functional.

## Install

pip install ratelimit
uv add ratelimit
poetry add ratelimit

## Installing ratelimit

Before you install: High install friction; the package has not been updated since 2018-12-17, over 2797 days ago. While the repository remains active and marked stable, the age of the latest release may indicate limited responsiveness to compatibility issues.

License in practice: MIT license is permissive; you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely with minimal restrictions, though you must include the license notice.

Quickstart:

pip install ratelimit

from ratelimit import limits

FIFTEEN_MINUTES = 900

@limits(calls=15, period=FIFTEEN_MINUTES)
def call_api(url):
    response = requests.get(url)
    return response

No runtime dependencies, but requires an external HTTP library (e.g. requests) for the decorated function to work.

Verify before relying:

- Compatibility with current Python versions (requires_python is unspecified)
- Whether the package works correctly with modern async frameworks
- Active community support or response time for bug reports given the 2018 release date

## Package facts

- License: MIT (permissive)
- Python support: unspecified
- Install friction: high
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 12.7M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

rate limit decorator, api call throttling, prevent rate limit violations, function call frequency limiter, api quota enforcement, throttle function calls, rate limiting decorator python, api-throttling, decorator, legacy-stable

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