Abstract: Systems and methods for throttling requests to web services are disclosed. A system is configured to receive, at a host, one or more requests during a first time period. Each request is for a web service hosted on a backend. The host is one of a plurality of hosts of an application programming interface (API) gateway to receive a plurality of requests for the web services. The system is further configured to: process at least a portion of the one or more requests for the one or more web services; count, by a local counter in a local cache of the host, the one or more requests received at the host during the first time period; compare a local count of the local counter to a local bucket size associated with the host; and provide an instruction to update a remote count of a remote counter based on the comparison.