Why I stopped using Redis for rate limiting

Subhodip Mishra — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:16:24 +0000

The Problem

Every Node.js rate limiting solution I tried had the same issue — Redis in the hot path.

Request comes in → middleware → network call to Redis → wait → process. That's 5-20ms added to every single request. At scale, this becomes a real problem.

What I Built

Pace runs a Rust native addon directly inside your Node.js process via napi-rs.

No network calls. No Redis. Decisions happen in memory in under 0.001ms.

How it works

npm i pace-node

const pace = new Pace({ mode: "active" });

app.post("/api", pace.limit({
  algorithm: "sliding-window",
  limit: 10,
  window: "1m"
}), handler);

Why Rust?

Rust runs natively inside Node.js process — completely bypassing JavaScript V8 garbage collection pauses. Memory footprint under 2MB.

Try it