CloudWatch Logs: Rate exceeded (ThrottlingException)
PutLogEvents API calls are being throttled by CloudWatch Logs. The account or log group is exceeding the API rate limit.
Quick fix
Read the commands before running them. Anything that restarts a service, deletes data or changes permissions should be tried on a non-production system first.
# Batch log events (max 10,000 per PutLogEvents)
# Use CloudWatch Agent instead of direct API calls
# Implement exponential backoff on retries
# Request limit increase via AWS Support
# Consider using Kinesis Data Firehose for high volumeHow to diagnose Logging errors
Logging failures are dangerous because they are silent: the application keeps running while its telemetry disappears. The recurring causes are buffer overflow under backpressure (the destination cannot keep up), permissions on log files or directories, and ingestion rate limits at the cloud provider. Monitoring the logging pipeline itself is the only reliable way to notice.
If the quick fix above does not resolve it, work through these steps. They apply to this whole class of error, not just to this one message, which is usually what saves the time.
- Check the collector's own logs first: Fluentd, Logstash and the CloudWatch agent all log their own failures, usually to a separate destination.
- Look for backpressure metrics: buffer queue length, retry counts, and dropped-record counters. A full buffer means the destination, not the collector, is the bottleneck.
- Verify write permissions and disk space on the buffer path. A full disk silently stops most collectors.
- For cloud ingestion, check the API rate limit for the log group or stream and batch more aggressively rather than retrying harder.
- Add a heartbeat log line and alert on its absence. This is the only way to detect a pipeline that has stopped without erroring.
Tools worth reaching for
collector self-logsbuffer/queue metricsdf -haws logs describe-log-streamslogger / fluent-cat for test events
Authoritative references
Primary documentation for this error, worth reading before applying any fix in production.
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Something missing or wrong?
This entry is maintained by hand. If the fix is out of date, incomplete, or you have a better one, email a correction and it will be reviewed.