Understanding the Differences Between Rate Limiting, Debouncing, and Throttling

Rate limiting, debouncing, and throttling are three different ways to control the frequency at which functions must be invoked over a given period. These concepts are essential in any queueing system. Rate limiting is commonly used with public APIs like OpenAI or Shopify API to limit the number of requests per hour or day. Debouncing provides protection against spikes of invocations by preserving the last occurrence of the given window. Throttling, on the other hand, buffers queued function runs to match a configured frequency and time window, often used when dealing with third-party API rate limits.