Istio · Rate Limits

Istio Rate Limits

Istio is open-source software, not a hosted SaaS, so there are no provider-enforced API rate limits. The "Istio APIs" are Kubernetes Custom Resources (VirtualService, DestinationRule, Gateway, AuthorizationPolicy, etc.) read and written via the Kubernetes API server. Rate limiting in an Istio mesh is something operators *configure* (local rate limit via Envoy, or global rate limit via an external rate-limit service) — it is not enforced against Istio itself.

Istio Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Istio on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.

It captures 1 rate-limit definition, measuring varies.

The profile also includes 3 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled.

Tagged areas include Rate Limiting, Service Mesh, Open Source, and Networking.

1 Limits Throttle: 429
Rate LimitingService MeshOpen SourceNetworking

Limits

Self-managed cluster
varies
operator-configured

Policies

Operator-controlled
Throughput against Istio control-plane CRDs is governed by the underlying Kubernetes API server; clients should respect kube-apiserver QPS/burst settings.
In-mesh rate limiting
Use Istio's local rate limit (Envoy local rate limit filter) for per-instance limits and the global rate limit pattern (Envoy + ext_authz to a rate-limit service) for shared quotas.
No vendor SaaS limit
Istio itself does not impose a service-side rate limit; community / vendor distributions may set their own SLOs.

Sources