Rate limits

NOTE: For GitLab.com, please see GitLab.com-specific rate limits.

Rate limiting is a common technique used to improve the security and durability of a web application.

For example, a simple script can make thousands of web requests per second. Whether malicious, apathetic, or just a bug, your application and infrastructure may not be able to cope with the load. For more details, see Denial-of-service attack. Most cases can be mitigated by limiting the rate of requests from a single IP address.

Most brute-force attacks are similarly mitigated by a rate limit.

Admin Area settings

These are rate limits you can set in the Admin Area of your instance:

• Import/Export rate limits
• Issues rate limits
• Notes rate limits
• Protected paths
• Raw endpoints rate limits
• User and IP rate limits
• Package registry rate limits

Non-configurable limits

Repository archives

Introduced in GitLab 12.9.

There is a rate limit for downloading repository archives, which applies to the project and to the user initiating the download either through the UI or the API.

The rate limit is 5 requests per minute per user.

Webhook Testing

Introduced in GitLab 13.4.

There is a rate limit for testing webhooks, which prevents abuse of the webhook functionality.

The rate limit is 5 requests per minute per user.

Rack Attack initializer

This method of rate limiting is cumbersome, but has some advantages. It allows throttling of specific paths, and is also integrated into Git and container registry requests. See Rack Attack initializer.