Get Your CertSAA-C03PlayCompete
‹ All SAA-C03 questions

SAA-C03 Practice Question 75: API Gateway Usage Plan Throttling

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) · Test 8 · question 5 of 10

Application Decouplingmedium

A public REST API fronted by Amazon API Gateway is backed by a fixed-size database that starts timing out above roughly 600 requests per second. Most partners send modest traffic, but one partner's batch job occasionally floods the API and takes the service down for everyone. The company wants each partner held to its own agreed request rate and monthly call allowance, and wants partners that exceed it to receive a clear rejection rather than bringing the backend down.

What should the architect configure?

Select one answer
Show answer and explanation

Answer:

  • D. Create API Gateway usage plans with per-client rate, burst and quota settings, and issue each partner an API key associated with its plan

Usage plans are the API Gateway feature for per-client limits. Clients are identified by the API key they present, each key is associated with a plan, and the plan sets a throttling rate and burst using a token bucket, plus a quota for the number of calls over a period. Per-client limits are applied before per-method, account and Regional limits, so one partner's batch job is throttled on its own key and the others are unaffected. Requests over the limit get a 429 Too Many Requests response, which is exactly the clear rejection the company asked for, and the backend never sees the excess traffic.

Option A helps only where responses are cacheable and identical across partners. It does nothing to bound a partner that sends a flood of distinct requests, and the requirement is a per-partner allowance, which a cache has no concept of.

Option B targets the wrong layer and the wrong identity. API Gateway is a managed regional endpoint that you do not place behind your own load balancer, and a partner behind NAT presents one address for many callers while another partner may present many addresses.

Option C is the closest wrong answer. A WAF rate-based rule does limit requests, but it counts by source IP address rather than by client identity, so it cannot express "this partner's agreed rate", has no monthly quota concept, and blocks rather than returning the throttling response a partner's client is expected to back off on.

Reference: Throttle requests to your REST APIs for better throughput in API Gateway

Practice Test 8 ›

Study guides for SAA-C03

AWS Developer Associate exam guide: DVA-C02 to DVA-C03AWS Developer Associate exam: DVA-C02 ends 30 November 2026 and DVA-C03 starts 1 December. What changes, which to sit, format, price and study plan.
AWS interview questions: scenarios, freshers to experiencedAWS interview questions on EC2, Lambda, S3, databases, VPC and IAM, by level, with four scenarios worked end to end and the facts old answers get wrong.
AWS Security Specialty: is it worth it, and what's testedAWS Security Specialty (SCS-C03): who it's worth it for, the six domains, new question types, price, and how it compares with CISSP.
SAA-C03 exam guide: what's on it and how to passSAA-C03 exam guide for 2026: the four domains, 65 questions in 130 minutes, price in USD and INR, the October 2026 guide update and a study plan.
AWS Service Control Policies Explained: SCPs and DenialsAWS service control policies explained: how SCPs cap permissions, why admins still get access denied, inheritance, deny vs allow lists and the exam traps.
Business Automation Examples: McDonald's to Step FunctionsBusiness automation examples from McDonald's, KFC, Ford and Toyota, the four moves they share, what to automate first, and AWS Step Functions.
How AI Is Changing Software Jobs: Where to PrepareHow AI is changing software jobs: what history shows, the evidence on junior developers, what Klarna learned, new AI roles and five domains to prepare for.
How AWS Certification Exams Work: Scoring and RenewalHow AWS certification exams work: levels, booking, question types, unscored questions, scaled scores, pass marks, validity and how recertification works.
How Netflix Uses AWS: Control Plane, CDN and ChaosHow Netflix uses AWS: the 2008 outage behind the move, control plane vs Open Connect, chaos engineering, multi-Region design and what it teaches for exams.
What Is Amazon RDS? Multi-AZ, Read Replicas and BackupsWhat is Amazon RDS? Engines, Multi-AZ, read replicas, backups, RDS Proxy, Aurora and pricing explained, with the traps that AWS exams set around each one.
What Is AWS Lambda? Triggers, Concurrency and Cold StartsWhat is AWS Lambda? How functions run, cold starts, triggers vs event source mappings, concurrency, layers, aliases, pricing and the exam traps.
What jobs can you get with AWS Cloud Practitioner?What jobs can you get with AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)? The roles it helps with, the ones it won't land on its own, and what to add next.
AWS CloudOps Engineer Associate (SOA-C03) exam guideAWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate (SOA-C03) replaced SysOps Administrator. Format, cost, the five domains, what changed and how to prepare.
Which AWS certification should you get? 2026 roadmapWhich AWS certification to get first, by role and experience, with each exam's status in October 2026, what is changing, and prices in USD and INR.
What Is AWS Glue? Data Catalog, Crawlers and ETL JobsWhat is AWS Glue? The Data Catalog, crawlers, ETL jobs and DPUs, workflows, streaming, job bookmarks, Flex and Data Quality, plus the traps AWS exams set.
AWS Edge Locations and CloudFront, ExplainedHow AWS edge locations work: CloudFront POPs, regional edge caches, the request path, edge location vs Region, and the Global Accelerator exam trap.
What Is Amazon EC2? Instances, AMIs, EBS and Auto ScalingAmazon EC2 explained: instances, AMIs, instance types, security groups, EBS, Auto Scaling groups and pricing options, with the traps AWS exams set.
Amazon S3 storage classes and lifecycle rulesHow S3 storage classes, Intelligent-Tiering and lifecycle rules work, with the retrieval fees and minimum durations that AWS exam questions turn on.
AWS disaster recovery strategies, RTO and RPOBackup and restore, pilot light, warm standby and active/active on AWS, how RTO and RPO pick between them, and the services each strategy uses.
IAM users, roles and policies on AWSHow IAM users, roles, identity-based and resource-based policies, cross-account access, SCPs and permissions boundaries fit together for AWS exams.
SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge on AWSWhen to use an SQS queue, an SNS topic or an EventBridge bus, plus fan-out, FIFO ordering, visibility timeouts and dead-letter queues for AWS exams.
The AWS shared responsibility model explainedWhat AWS secures and what you secure on EC2, RDS, Lambda and S3, how the line moves with each service, and how Cloud Practitioner questions test it.
VPC endpoints vs NAT gateways on AWSWhen to use gateway endpoints, interface endpoints (PrivateLink) or a NAT gateway for private subnets, and the cost and security trade-offs exams test.