How to Avoid Third-Party Rate-Limiting Errors in AWS Lambda?
A company uses an AWS Lambda function to call a third-party service. The third-party service has a limit of requests each minute. If the number of requests exceeds the limit, the third-party service returns rate-limiting errors. A developer needs to configure the Lambda function to avoid receiving rate limiting errors from the third-party service. Which solution will meet these requirements?
Community Votes
100% of anonymous learners picked answer A. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.
Community Insight
This question tests your understanding of AWS Lambda concurrency controls and the common trap is confusing reserved concurrency with provisioned concurrency.
Learn how to prevent rate-limiting errors from third-party services in AWS Lambda by using reserved concurrency. The community agrees that setting reserved concurrency to match the vendor's request limit is the correct solution.
Choosing C (Provisioned concurrency) is the most common mistake because it also deals with concurrency, but provisioned concurrency only keeps environments warm and does not limit the maximum number of concurrent executions.
Community Discussion (4 comments)
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Expert Analysis
Why the Answer Is Correct
Reserved concurrency sets a hard limit on the number of concurrent executions for a Lambda function. By configuring reserved concurrency to match the third-party service's allowed requests per minute, you ensure that Lambda never invokes more concurrent instances than the vendor can handle, thereby avoiding rate-limiting errors. This is a straightforward and effective throttling mechanism.
Why the Other Options Are Wrong
Option B (decrease memory) affects CPU and performance, not invocation concurrency, so it does nothing to limit requests. Option C (provisioned concurrency) is designed to keep instances warm and reduce cold starts; it does not cap the maximum concurrency and can actually increase the number of concurrent executions. Option D (increase timeout) gives the function more time to run but does not prevent it from being invoked too frequently. Therefore, only A directly addresses the rate limit.
Community Comment Notes
Comment [1] clearly explains why A is correct and dismisses B, C, and D with valid reasoning: B lowers CPU, C is for warm standby, and D is unrelated to timeouts. Comment [2] provides a useful reference to AWS provisioned concurrency docs, but that link actually supports why C is wrong. The consensus (93 votes for A) strongly reinforces reserved concurrency as the standard solution for controlling concurrency against external API limits.
Official Reference
Exam Strategy
For AWS Lambda questions involving rate limits or throttling from downstream services, always look for reserved concurrency as the correct control. Remember that provisioned concurrency is about performance (cold starts), not limiting concurrency, so avoid that trap.
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