--- title: "Distributed rate limiter with HRW in Elixir" url: https://daily.dev/posts/distributed-rate-limiter-with-hrw-in-elixir-hq5zuc3vh source_url: https://jola.dev/posts/distributed-ratelimiter-with-hrw type: article source: "Awesome Elixir" published: 2026-08-05T07:20:17.870Z updated: 2026-08-05T07:20:37.300Z tags: ["elixir", "distributed-systems"] reading_time: 5 upvotes: 1 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Distributed rate limiter with HRW in Elixir **[Awesome Elixir](https://daily.dev/sources/awelix)** · 5 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A practical guide to building a cluster-aware rate limiter in Elixir without Redis, using HRW (Highest Random Weight / Rendezvous Hashing) to route rate limit checks to the correct node. The approach uses the Hammer library with an ETS backend and a GenServer that delegates requests to the node responsible for a given key. HRW is presented as a simpler, stateless alternative to ExHashRing for small clusters (under 10 nodes), with minimal key reassignment when nodes join or leave. The pattern generalizes to distributed caching and ephemeral event tracking as well. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [28 Million Decisions Per Second. Zero Allocations. One Rate Limiter.](https://daily.dev/posts/28-million-decisions-per-second-zero-allocations-one-rate-limiter--a6kmxkmhy) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [High Performance Rate Limiting at Databricks](https://daily.dev/posts/high-performance-rate-limiting-at-databricks-lln88cxlb) · ByteByteGo · 13 upvotes · 0 comments - [High Performance Ratelimiting at Databricks](https://daily.dev/posts/high-performance-ratelimiting-at-databricks-6rq9jzmcp) · databricks · 5 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#elixir](https://daily.dev/tags/elixir), [#distributed-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/distributed-systems) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/distributed-rate-limiter-with-hrw-in-elixir-hq5zuc3vh)