Rate limit on Projects API

DETAILS: Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate Offering: Self-managed

• Introduced in GitLab 15.10 with a flag named rate_limit_for_unauthenticated_projects_api_access. Disabled by default.
• Enabled on GitLab.com on May 08, 2023.
• Enabled on self-managed in GitLab 16.0 by default.
• Generally available in GitLab 16.0. Feature flag rate_limit_for_unauthenticated_projects_api_access removed.
• Rate limit for group and projects API introduced in GitLab 17.1. with a flag named rate_limit_groups_and_projects_api. Disabled by default.

You can configure the rate limit per IP address and per user for requests to the following projects API.

Limit	Default	Interval
GET /projects (unauthenticated requests)	400	10 minutes
GET /projects (authenticated requests)	2000	10 minutes
GET /projects/:id	400	1 minute
GET /users/:user_id/projects	300	1 minute
GET /users/:user_id/contributed_projects	100	1 minute
GET /users/:user_id/starred_projects	100	1 minute

To change the rate limit:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin area.
2. Select Settings > Network.
3. Expand Projects API rate limits.
4. Change the value of any rate limit. The rate limits are per minute per user for authenticated requests and per IP address unauthenticated requests. Set to 0 to disable a rate limit.
5. Select Save changes.

The rate limits:

• Apply per user if the user is authenticated.
• Apply per IP address if the user is unauthenticated.
• Can be set to 0 to disable rate limiting.
• Are behind the rate_limit_groups_and_projects_api except for the unauthenticated requests to the GET /projects API.

Requests over the rate limit are logged into the auth.log file.

For example, if you set a limit of 400 for GET /projects/:id, requests to the API endpoint that exceed a rate of 400 within 1 minutes are blocked. Access to the endpoint is restored after one minutes have elapsed.