Glossary

Sliding window rate limiting

Sliding window rate limiting maintains a rolling count of requests over the most recent N seconds, rather than resetting at fixed boundaries. This eliminates the boundary exploit of fixed windows. Exact sliding window timestamps each request; approximate sliding window combines the current window count with a weighted fraction of the previous window.

Formula: Approximate: count = current_window_count + previous_window_count × (1 − elapsed_fraction_of_current_window).

Last updated: March 2026