# I want to setup global rate limit with memcached in NGINX Ingress Controller

**URL:** <https://community.nginx.org/t/i-want-to-setup-global-rate-limit-with-memcached-in-nginx-ingress-controller/7720>\
**Category:** NGINX Ingress Controller\
**Tags:** rate-limit, reverse-proxy, web-server\
**Created:** [October 22, 2025, 8:12am UTC](https://community.nginx.org/t/i-want-to-setup-global-rate-limit-with-memcached-in-nginx-ingress-controller/7720 "2025-10-22T08:12:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![don-hero](https://drob5swvtjqxg.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.nginx.org/don-hero/32/3534_2.png) [@don-hero](https://community.nginx.org/u/don-hero)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 8:12am UTC](https://community.nginx.org/t/i-want-to-setup-global-rate-limit-with-memcached-in-nginx-ingress-controller/7720/1 "2025-10-22T08:12:19Z")

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_Please use this template for troubleshooting questions._

**My issue:**

**How I encountered the problem:** want to setup global rate limit with memcached in nginx ingress as annotations doesn’t support in the latest nginx releases

**Solutions I’ve tried: there is no doc available**

**Version of NIC and/or NGINX: v** 1.13.3

**Deployment environment: GKE**

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**Author:** ![Paul\_Abel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@Paul\_Abel](https://community.nginx.org/u/Paul_Abel)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 11:31am UTC](https://community.nginx.org/t/i-want-to-setup-global-rate-limit-with-memcached-in-nginx-ingress-controller/7720/2 "2025-10-23T11:31:06Z")

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NGINX Ingress controller released a feature similar to global rate limit in their [5.0.0](https://docs.nginx.com/nginx-ingress-controller/releases/#500) release. This utilises [NGINX Plus zone sync](https://docs.nginx.com/nginx-ingress-controller/configuration/global-configuration/configmap-resource/#zone-sync) along with our [rate limiting](https://docs.nginx.com/nginx-ingress-controller/configuration/ingress-resources/advanced-configuration-with-annotations/#rate-limiting) functionality to achieve the same results without the requirement to run memcached in cluster.

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**Author:** ![Paul\_Abel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@Paul\_Abel](https://community.nginx.org/u/Paul_Abel)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 12:05pm UTC](https://community.nginx.org/t/i-want-to-setup-global-rate-limit-with-memcached-in-nginx-ingress-controller/7720/3 "2025-10-23T12:05:36Z")

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An alternative to the NGINX Plus solution for OSS users is the `nginx.org/limit-req-scale` annotation which will set a rate limit per pod based on the number of pods running. So if you want a global rate limit of 10r/s and you have two replicas of the NIC pods, each pod will individually get a rate limit of 5r/s. This adjusts as the replica count scales up or down.

There are some limitations to this approach ([as documented](https://docs.nginx.com/nginx-ingress-controller/configuration/ingress-resources/advanced-configuration-with-annotations/#rate-limiting)) but may work well for many users.

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**Author:** ![system](https://drob5swvtjqxg.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.nginx.org/system/32/19_2.png) [@system](https://community.nginx.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2025, 1:48pm UTC](https://community.nginx.org/t/i-want-to-setup-global-rate-limit-with-memcached-in-nginx-ingress-controller/7720/4 "2025-11-10T13:48:45Z")

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