Configure rate limiting rules
This page provides an example of creating a rate limiting rule in a zone using Terraform.
For more information on rate limiting rules, refer to Rate limiting rules in the Cloudflare WAF documentation.
Before you start
Obtain the necessary account or zone IDs
The Terraform configurations provided in this page need the zone ID (or account ID) of the zone/account where you will deploy rulesets.
- To retrieve the list of accounts you have access to, including their IDs, use the List accounts API operation.
- To retrieve the list of zones you have access to, including their IDs, use the List zones API operation.
Import or delete existing rulesets
Terraform assumes that it has complete control over account and zone rulesets. If you already have rulesets configured in your account or zone, do one of the following:
- Import existing rulesets to Terraform using the
cf-terraforming
tool. Recent versions of the tool can generate resource definitions for existing rulesets and import their configuration to Terraform state. - Start from scratch by deleting existing rulesets (account and zone rulesets with
"kind": "root"
and"kind": "zone"
, respectively) and then defining your rulesets configuration in Terraform.
Create a rate limiting rule
This example creates a rate limiting rule in zone with ID <ZONE_ID>
blocking traffic that exceeds the configured rate:
resource "cloudflare_ruleset" "zone_rl" { zone_id = "<ZONE_ID>" name = "Rate limiting for my zone" description = "" kind = "zone" phase = "http_ratelimit"
rules { action = "block" ratelimit { characteristics = ["cf.colo.id", "ip.src"] period = 60 requests_per_period = 100 mitigation_timeout = 600 } expression = "(http.request.uri.path matches \"^/api/\")" description = "My rate limiting rule" enabled = true }
}
Account-level example configuration
This example defines a custom ruleset with a single rate limiting rule in account with ID <ACCOUNT_ID>
that blocks traffic for the /api/
path exceeding the configured rate. The second cloudflare_ruleset
resource defines an execute
rule that deploys the custom ruleset for traffic addressed at example.com
.
resource "cloudflare_ruleset" "account_rl" { account_id = <ACCOUNT_ID> name = "Rate limiting rules for APIs" description = "" kind = "custom" phase = "http_ratelimit"
rules { action = "block" ratelimit { characteristics = ["cf.colo.id", "ip.src"] period = 60 requests_per_period = 100 mitigation_timeout = 600 } expression = "http.request.uri.path contains \"/api/\"" description = "API rule" enabled = true }
}
# Account-level entry point ruleset for the 'http_ratelimit' phase
resource "cloudflare_ruleset" "account_rl_entrypoint" { account_id = <ACCOUNT_ID> name = "Account-level rate limiting" description = "" kind = "root" phase = "http_ratelimit"
depends_on = [cloudflare_ruleset.account_rl]
rules { # Deploy the previously defined custom ruleset containing a rate limiting rule action = "execute" action_parameters { id = cloudflare_ruleset.account_rl.id } expression = "cf.zone.name eq \"example.com\" and cf.zone.plan eq \"ENT\"" description = "Deploy custom ruleset with RL rule" enabled = true }
}
Create an advanced rate limiting rule
This example creates a rate limiting rule in zone with ID <ZONE_ID>
with:
- A custom counting expression that includes a response field (
http.response.code
). - A custom JSON response for rate limited requests.
resource "cloudflare_ruleset" "zone_rl_custom_response" { zone_id = "<ZONE_ID>" name = "Advanced rate limiting rule for my zone" description = "" kind = "zone" phase = "http_ratelimit"
rules { action = "block" action_parameters { response { status_code = 429 content = "{\"response\": \"block\"}" content_type = "application/json" } } ratelimit { characteristics = ["ip.src", "cf.colo.id"] period = 10 requests_per_period = 5 mitigation_timeout = 30 counting_expression = "(http.host eq \"www.example.com\") and (http.request.uri.path matches \"^/status/\") and (http.response.code eq 404)" } expression = "http.host eq \"www.example.com\" and (http.request.uri.path matches \"^/status/\")" description = "Rate limit requests to www.example.com when exceeding the threshold of 404 responses on /status/" enabled = true }
}