Etcd · Rate Limits
Etcd Rate Limits
etcd is self-hosted open-source software, so there is no upstream "service" rate limit. etcd does enforce its own resource caps (max-request-bytes, quota-backend-bytes, max-concurrent-streams) that act as throttling/safety mechanisms; the actual request throughput is limited by hardware (disk fsync latency dominates) and by the Raft protocol's serialization of writes. The values below describe configurable etcd guardrails rather than a vendor quota.
4 Limits
Rate LimitingDistributed SystemsKey-Value StoreOpen Source
Limits
max-request-bytes server
1572864
Default 1.5 MiB per request; configurable.
quota-backend-bytes cluster
2147483648
Default 2 GiB DB quota; raise to 8 GiB max safe; cluster goes read-only when exceeded.
max-concurrent-streams server
4294967295
gRPC max-concurrent-streams; effectively unbounded by default.
Operator-imposed throttle client
operator-defined via client-side rate limiting or proxy
Policies
Linearizable reads
Linearizable reads require quorum; degrade to serializable reads to lower load when consistency tolerates it.
Compaction and defragmentation
Schedule periodic compaction of revisions and defrag to keep DB size under quota-backend-bytes.
Backoff
On RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED or UNAVAILABLE, clients should apply exponential backoff with jitter and avoid retry storms.