What is Cloudflare Error 1015? How To Fix This?

The rate-limiting feature of Cloudflare was developed with the goal of protecting internet services from the various kinds of assaults that users can launch.

Cloudflare has the ability to reject legitimate requests under certain circumstances, which can result in an error message that looks somewhat like this:

What is Cloudflare Error 1015: You Are Being Rate Limited?

When a user reports seeing error 1015, this indicates that Cloudflare has placed a rate limit on their connection. This indicates that the connection attempt from the rate-limited device will be temporarily prevented for a period of time.

When anything like this occurs, the visitor will be unable to access the domain until the mistake has had sufficient time to expire.

Users will frequently leave a site entirely if they encounter the 1015 error.

Cloudflare Error - Cloudflare Error 1015

A shrewd website owner will take steps to fix 1015 issues as quickly as they can in order to keep the flow of traffic uninterrupted.

(Don’t require a comprehensive explanation regarding rate-limiting? (To get directly to the answers, please click here.)

What is Rate Limiting?

Because a high number of queries within a short amount of time might cause a website to become overloaded, Cloudflare enables website administrators to monitor and manage their users’ bandwidth consumption.

Through the use of the rate-limiting tool that is included in Cloudflare’s website owner settings, you are able to reduce the negative effects of high volumes of traffic by configuring a “rate-limiting” rule that is specific to an IP address or domain.

Cloudflare may immediately block traffic from a questionable site visitor or IP address using a feature called rate limiting. This prevents hackers, spammers, and other online pests from slowing down your website’s performance with DDoS attacks and other illegal actions.

How to Fix Cloudflare Error 1015: You Are Being Rate Limited

  • Your activity should be slowed down
  • Rate limiting should be disabled
  • Your old rate-limiting configuration should be deleted
  • Increase the threshold for rate-limiting requests
  • Be sure to check the time restrictions on your rate limits
  • You may want to consider increasing your bandwidth
  • Make Your Website More Effective
  • Contact Cloudflare Support

Cloudflare Error 1015: “Your rate is limited” can be caused by several factors.

It is most often due to issues with the rate-limiting configuration that the site owner has the ability to fix when a legitimate site visitor is blocked by the rate-limiting error 1015.

If a user sends many legitimate requests very quickly, your web server should be able to handle the extra traffic load.

How to troubleshoot Cloudflare rate-limiting errors and the various root causes that lead to them will be explored next.

BTW a quick note:

In Cloudflare, there is a cache purge error code with the label 1015 that has nothing to do with the issue with rate restriction.

The phrase “Unable to purge” refers to a different 1015 error number that occurs while attempting to purge the cache on Cloudflare. Check out Cloudflare’s recommendations for clearing cache if you think this is the kind of information you’re looking for.

1. Slow Down Your Activity

In many instances, the only thing your user needs to do to resolve the issue is to slow down.

When you engage with a website in any way, each action you perform requires some of the resources that are available on the page.

If the site’s traffic is not managed, performance may suffer (and the site may even become inaccessible). By identifying and mitigating excessive request rates to the domain, the rate-limiting feature of Cloudflare helps to prevent these slowdowns.

Your server should be configured to manage typical visitor traffic and activity in such a way that excessive volumes of requests do not prevent visitors from accessing your website or app, with the exception of really unusual circumstances.

A temporary stopgap you can employ while you take measures to strengthen your Cloudflare rate-limiting setup and firewall rules is to slow down the user behavior on your website. However, this should only be done temporarily.

2. Disable Rate Limiting

Even though I can’t in good faith recommend that you completely disable your Cloudfare rate-limiting, doing this step will at the very least allow your visitor traffic to flow freely.

If your website is experiencing a high number of Cloudflare 1015 failures, which is causing your business to come to a standstill, you can disable the rate limit restrictions entirely in order to make your website accessible to all traffic from any IP address that is permitted to access it.

Keep in mind that doing this could make your website more susceptible to DDoS attacks or high-volume queries, which could cause it to become unresponsive or even crash entirely.

This method should only be implemented as the initial step toward optimizing the rate limitation setup on your Cloudflare account by a responsible site owner.

3. Delete Your Old Rate Limiting Configuration

Even after disabling the rate limitation, it’s possible that users will continue to encounter an error code 1015 on your website and send you a complaint about it.

You may still be able to use your rate limit rules in extremely unusual circumstances even though the domain’s rate-limiting feature is disabled.

You can guarantee that your rate limiting is turned off correctly by first re-enabling the rate-limiting option in your site owner settings, then deleting each and every one of your rate-limiting rules in their entirety, and finally turning off rate limiting once more.

4. Raise Your Rate Limiting Request Threshold

One of the most prevalent contributing factors to a Cloudflare error 1015 is having an extremely low limit.

We are able to place a cap on the number of page requests that can come from an IP address within a specified period of time thanks to the site owner settings. Users typically operate under the false assumption that each request corresponds to one pageview on the website.

This is not the case, as a single pageview can result in as many as fifty or more requests being sent to your server in a matter of seconds, particularly if the visitor is utilizing a reverse proxy or has recently completed a cache purge.

One common reason for the 1015 error is that the value of the request was restricted on the basis of an incorrect interpretation.

If your website’s access is restricted due to a low threshold for the number of requests, you should experiment with deactivating this rate limit under your account settings or consider raising the limit.

5. Check the Time Restrictions On Your Rate Limits

Another typical error is configuring a rate-limiting rule in such a way that it blocks an IP address if it makes several requests inside a 10-second window.

This could result in valid traffic experiencing unwarranted lockouts at a time when consumers should have full access to your website.

The technicians that provide help for Cloudflare recommend that you set the rate-limiting settings for your account to a minimum of 10 seconds.

This isn’t always the default setting, and most problems occur when the site owner inadvertently types in “1” rather than the correct 10 seconds for this arrangement.

If your Cloudflare rate limit times are not enough high to accommodate regular traffic from everyone visiting your site at the same time, then your users will notice more Cloudflare 1015 problems. 

6. Consider Increasing Your Bandwidth

The amount of traffic and users visiting your application are two factors that determine whether or not these abuse protection mechanisms from Cloudflare are activated in a given scenario.

If you, as the owner of the site, anticipate that you will frequently receive the 1015 error message as a result of traffic or that you will encounter this issue when using your application, you should get in touch with Cloudflare support to have your limit raised.

7. Optimize Your Website

Cookies that are saved in a visitor’s browser make it easier for that visitor to load material while making fewer requests. However, if the browser’s cookies and cache have been deleted, it will be necessary for the browser to reload the site’s information in its entirety.

Websites with poor design or poor optimization are more likely to throw errors at legitimate IP addresses.

You may hear from your customers about the following issues:

  • Posts and articles on your site need to be refreshed regularly
  • Each time they access a given URL, they must clear their cache and cookies
  • Loading time is slow

It will generate a large increase in the amount of request traffic to your servers if you are required to repeatedly refresh, reload, and return an area of the website each time you access it.

If you are receiving any of these complaints, you need to check to make sure that each section of your website is loading correctly and providing the visitor’s browser with the required information regarding cache and cookies.

A website that has been correctly optimized can help to reduce the request load, which will allow your community to access your site without encountering any errors.

8. Reach Out to the Cloudflare Support Community

In the event that these suggestions do not assist you in locating and fixing the issues that are causing the 1015 error code to appear on your domain servers, application, or program, the Cloudflare support staff is always available to assist you.

Cloudflare provides you with a number of support articles as well as a community forum to assist you in resolving issues that are related to your configuration. In addition, if you pay for a support contract, Cloudflare will provide assistance to you by email or live phone support.

You are still able to make use of the extensive community forums even if you or the owner of your site uses Cloudflare’s service for free accounts.

You can discover discussions in the Cloudflare forums and throughout the larger online community that are full of specific information about how to fix a variety of error signals.

Maintain a watchful eye on the community forums so that you may remain current on the most recent information regarding the problems and errors that you have encountered on your Cloudflare server or website.

If you have any inquiries regarding this Cloudflare article (or if you have any comments or suggestions for how it could be improved).

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Aishwar Babber

Aishwar Babber is a passionate blogger and a digital marketer. He loves to talk and blog about the latest tech and gadgets, which motivates him to run GizmoBase. He is currently practicing his digital marketing, SEO, and SMO expertise as a full-time marketer on various projects. He is an active investor in AffiliateBay and a director in ImageStation.

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