We keep hitting rate limits on target sites, what infrastructure helps?

If you’re hitting rate limits on target sites, the main fix is usually architecture + traffic discipline, not just “more IPs.”

Here’s the infrastructure that helps most:

1. Centralized rate limiting and request scheduling

• Put all outbound traffic through a job queue or dispatch service
• Enforce per-domain / per-host / per-account throttles
• Add burst control, global concurrency caps, and adaptive backoff
• Prefer a token bucket / leaky bucket model

2. Distributed worker pool

• Use workers that pull from a queue, so you can control throughput
• Scale workers horizontally, but keep the scheduler authoritative
• Make workers stateless so you can pause/resume traffic easily

3. Smart retry/backoff infrastructure

• Detect 429, 403, 503, and timeout patterns
• Apply exponential backoff with jitter
• Respect Retry-After headers
• Circuit-break domains that are currently throttling you

4. Caching and deduplication

• Cache responses aggressively when allowed
• Avoid re-fetching identical URLs or near-duplicates
• Maintain a content fingerprint / URL normalization layer

5. Proxy/network management

• If the site allows it, route traffic through a controlled egress pool
• Use sticky sessions only when needed
• Monitor IP reputation and isolate noisy traffic
• Keep proxy rotation conservative; aggressive rotation can make blocking worse

6. Identity/session management

• Reuse sessions, cookies, and authenticated state where appropriate
• Don’t create lots of fresh sessions unnecessarily
• Keep per-identity traffic within normal patterns

7. Observability

• Track:
  • request rate per domain
  • 429/403/5xx rates
  • latency
  • retry counts
  • queue depth
  • success/error by worker/IP/session
• Add alerts when throttling starts rising

8. Adaptive pacing

• Dynamically lower rate when errors increase
• Warm up slowly after idle periods
• Use per-target “health scores” to reduce traffic before hard blocks happen

9. Compliance / access strategy

• If this is a partner or public API, the best infrastructure may be:
  • authenticated API access
  • higher quota plans
  • bulk export endpoints
  • data agreements
• This often beats trying to engineer around limits

Good default stack

• Queue: SQS / RabbitMQ / Kafka
• Workers: containerized stateless workers
• Scheduler: central rate-limiting service
• Cache: Redis
• Metrics: Prometheus + Grafana
• Tracing/logging: OpenTelemetry + ELK/Cloud logging

If you tell me your use case — e.g. public web scraping, partner API integration, or internal testing — I can suggest a safer, more specific setup.