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Laravel rate limiting,with API keys your customers own.

Add the reqkey middleware to a route group. Every request is checked against the caller’s key, charged against their credits, and held to their plan’s limit.

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  • Keys issued per customer
  • Credits that refill
  • Limits per plan, not per process

Official SDKs with drop-in middleware for the stack you already run

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API requests validated
100M+
Average key validation
<5ms
Average analytics ingest
<5ms
Check and log, end to end
<10ms

The usual Laravel rate limiter counts requests. It doesn’t know your customers.

Laravel’s RateLimiter facade defines named limiters — per user or per IP — and the throttle middleware applies them, with counts in your cache store.

With RateLimiter + throttletoday
// AppServiceProvider.php — Laravel’s RateLimiteruse Illuminate\Cache\RateLimiting\Limit;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\RateLimiter;

RateLimiter::for('api', function (Request $request) {
    return Limit::perMinute(60)->by($request->user()?->id ?: $request->ip());
});

// routes/api.php
Route::middleware('throttle:api')->group(function () {
    // ...
});
  • Limits by logged-in user or IP — API keys need Sanctum tokens or your own table
  • Counts sit in your cache store, so the cache has to be shared across servers
  • No credit balance: a request can’t cost 5 on one route and 1 on another, or refill each month
  • Per-plan limits mean branching inside every limiter closure
  • No per-customer usage log to answer “why was I blocked?” or bill against
With ReqKey in Laravelone middleware
  • API keys issued per customer, prefixed, hashed, and revocable from the dashboard
  • A credit balance per customer — price each route, refill every hour, day, week, or month
  • Rate limits set per plan, shared by all of a customer’s keys, from 1 second to 24 hours
  • The same count on every worker, instance, and region — no Redis to run
  • Over the limit? A 429 with Retry-After, and no credits charged
  • Every request logged per customer — status, latency, endpoint — in under 5ms
Controllers read the verdict with $request->attributes->get('reqkey'). See the code

Laravel in three steps, one of them code.

ReqKey runs inside your API, not in front of it. Your server asks one question per request and gets an answer in under 5ms.

  1. 1

    Install the SDK

    composer require reqkey/reqkey

  2. 2

    Set your project key

    Copy it from the dashboard into REQKEY_PROJECT_KEY. It stays on your server.

  3. 3

    Add the Laravel middleware

    Every request is checked, charged, and logged before your handler runs.

config/reqkey.phpcomposer require reqkey/reqkey
// config/reqkey.php
return [
    'project_key' => env('REQKEY_PROJECT_KEY'),
    'api_id' => env('REQKEY_API_ID'),
    'middleware' => [
        'key_name' => 'X-Startup-Key',
        'exclude_paths' => ['/health'],
    ],
];
 
// routes/web.php — apply the auto-discovered "reqkey" alias
Route::middleware('reqkey')->post('/payments', function (Request $request) {
    $decision = $request->attributes->get('reqkey');
 
    return response()->json([
        'created' => true,
        'credits_remaining' => $decision->creditsRemaining,
    ], 201);
});
Also in PHP: Symfony, SlimFull PHP reference

Every request gets one of these answers

  • 200Valid key, credits charged — your handler runs
  • 402Out of credits
  • 403Key disabled, or not allowed on this API
  • 429Over the rate limit — no credits charged

Where ReqKey sits

Your customer
Your APIReqKey, under 5ms
Your handler

Responses go straight back to your customer. ReqKey sees the key check and the log line, nothing else.

Credits

Charge each route what it costs you.

A lookup can cost 1 credit and a render 5, from the same balance. Excluded paths are never validated, charged, or recorded. In PHP:

Per-route credits · PHP
new MiddlewareConfig(
    apiId: 'api_payments',
    // Exact paths or trailing-* prefixes: never validated, charged, or recorded
    excludePaths: ['/health', '/docs/*'],
    // Or decide per request with a predicate
    shouldProtect: static fn (RequestData $request): bool => str_starts_with($request->path, '/api/'),
    // Charge endpoints differently — a closure instead of an int
    credits: static fn (RequestData $request): int => $request->path === '/images' ? 5 : 1,
);

Rate limits

Set limits on plans, not in code.

Your Laravel code never hard-codes a number. Each plan carries its credits, refill, and rate limit; moving a customer to Pro changes all three with no deploy.

PlanCreditsRate limit
Free1,000 / month5 req / s
Pro50,000 / month50 req / s
Scale1,000,000 / month500 req / s
429Over the limit, a call is answered with Retry-After and costs nothing — no credits and no quota.

Example plans. You name them and pick the numbers.

Notes for Laravel teams hit in production.

Auto-discovered

The service provider registers itself and the reqkey middleware alias. Publish config/reqkey.php and you’re done.

Sanctum is for your app, ReqKey for your API

Keep Sanctum or Breeze for dashboard logins; issue ReqKey keys to the customers who call your paid API.

Octane-friendly

Counts and balances live outside the PHP process, so long-running workers under Octane stay correct.

Laravel rate limiting: the questions teams ask.

Something else? Ask the team or read the docs.

  • On routes protected by ReqKey, yes — ReqKey applies each customer’s plan limit. Keep throttle on public or session routes.

  • Run php artisan vendor:publish --tag=reqkey-config, then set REQKEY_PROJECT_KEY and REQKEY_API_ID in .env.

  • On their plan or on the customer (consumer) in ReqKey — a number of requests per window from 1 second to 24 hours, shared by all of that customer’s keys. Your Laravel code never hard-codes a limit, so upgrading a customer is a dashboard change, not a deploy.

  • A check averages under 5ms. ReqKey runs inside your app as middleware, not as a gateway in front of it, so responses go straight back to your customer.

  • You choose: fail closed and answer 503, or fail open and let requests through. Invalid keys are denied either way, and a validation is never retried, so no one is charged twice.

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