How to Solve Cloudflare Error 1015 "You Are Being Rate Limited"

Are you getting the Cloudflare Error 1015 "You Are Being Rate Limited" while scraping? This means that Cloudflare is restricting your traffic, but there are ways around it.

This article shows how the Cloudflare error 1015 rate-limited message is triggered and four ways to avoid it.

What Is Error Type 1015 "You Are Being Rate Limited" by Cloudflare?

Cloudflare's Error 1015 indicates that a user has exceeded a website's rate limit and their IP address has been banned. Like other Cloudflare errors such as Error 1003 and Error 1020, it's part of their WAF protection system. Its purpose is to prevent users from overloading the server and mitigate potential threats such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) and brute force attacks.

Unfortunately, Error 1015 is common during large-scale scraping involving multiple requests within seconds. Rate-limiting implementation varies by website. For instance, a site might block you after 100 requests in a single second, while others may block you after more or fewer requests.

When you visit a Cloudflare-protected website, the anti-bot tracks and analyzes the traffic from your IP address to ensure it's not violating the website's request rate terms. Requesting beyond the permitted limit often results in Cloudflare Error 1015, indicating that the site has banned your IP from further requests.

This ban is often temporary but can be permanent in harsher cases. In either scenario, your IP address may enter the list of disallowed IPs. So, even if the block is lifted, getting the Cloudflare 1015 error reduces your IP's trust score and can limit subsequent scraping activities. The best approach is to avoid it. 

Keep reading to learn the four tested techniques to bypass this error.

Method 1: Limit Your Number of Requests

One way to avoid Cloudflare's Error 1015 (rate-limiting) is to reduce your request frequency. For instance, if sending 100 requests per second triggers the rate limit, you should increase the time interval between requests to lower the rate. That way, you comply with the website's rate limit terms, reducing the likelihood of being banned.

A common approach is to randomize the wait time between requests to avoid creating a bot-like pattern and reduce suspicion.

To make the delays even more robust, use exponential backoffs to retry failed requests intuitively. The exponential backoff technique increases the wait time exponentially per failed request, helping you to spoof a real user.

Method 2: Avoid Rate-Limiting With Premium Proxies

Since Error 1015 from Cloudflare occurs due to restrictions on a single IP, one of the best ways to avoid it is to change your IP address at intervals. That's where proxies come in handy.   

Proxies are services that route your requests through another IP, making it look like you're from a different location. Proxies can be free or premium, depending on whether you use a paid service. 

While you can use free proxies to test your connections, they're unsuitable for real-life scraping projects due to their short lifespan and shared availability. Premium proxies are the best options. While they require a subscription, premium proxies offer enhanced reliability and performance.

When selecting a premium proxy service, consider a provider that offers advanced features, such as IP rotation and geolocation. These extra functionalities allow you to change your IP address per request or use IPs from a specific location.

That said, the most suitable proxies for web scraping are residential proxies. These distribute traffic across IP addresses assigned to daily internet users by network providers, making your scraper appear as several regular users accessing a website at a particular time. 

Read our detailed guide on the best web scraping proxies to learn more.

Method 3: Rotate Your Headers

Headers sent alongside every HTTP request provide the web server with details and context about the browser/client sending the request. In web scraping, the User Agent (UA) string is the most critical HTTP header as it informs the website of the sender's web client, operating system, etc.

Anti-bots, such as Cloudflare, can easily detect when multiple requests come from the same User Agent, allowing them to track and block the IP hosting the User Agent.

Rotating the User Agent header makes your requests appear as if they're coming from different users, increasing your chances of bypassing Cloudflare Error 1015. However, this technique works better when combined with the previous methods. 

For the best result, ensure your User Agent strings are correct and match the other headers. For instance, your User Agent platform must match the client hint platform header. Otherwise, Cloudflare might detect and block you. 

Check out our guide on User Agents for web scraping to learn more and get some working examples.

Method 4: Use a Web Scraper API

A web scraping API is the best way to avoid Cloudflare's rate-limiting error. Web scraper APIs are scraping solutions that handle all the anti-bot bypass steps behind the scenes. 

One of the top solutions is the ZenRows scraper API, which provides all the toolsets required to bypass Cloudflare Error 1015 rate limiting at scale. 

ZenRows has premium proxy autorotation and geolocation features to avoid potential IP bans from Error 1015. It also features anti-bot auto-bypass, request header management, and more, allowing you to avoid triggering the Cloudflare anti-bot system. 

All it takes is one API call in any programming language, and ZenRows handles all the complex tasks under the hood, leaving you hands-free to focus on your scraping logic.

Let's see how ZenRows works by requesting this Cloudflare challenge page. We'll use Python in this guide, so install the Requests library if you've not done so already:

pip3 install requests 

Sign up to open the ZenRows Request Builder and paste your target URL in the link box. Activate Premium Proxies and JS Rendering, choose your programming language (Python, in this case), and select the API connection mode.

The generated Python code should look like this:

# pip3 install requests
import requests

url = "https://www.scrapingcourse.com/cloudflare-challenge"
apikey = "<YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY>"
params = {
    "url": url,
    "apikey": apikey,
    "js_render": "true",
    "premium_proxy": "true",
}
response = requests.get("https://api.zenrows.com/v1/", params=params)

print(response.text)

The above code outputs the protected website's full-page HTML:

<html lang="en">
<head>
    <!-- ... -->
    <title>Cloudflare Challenge - ScrapingCourse.com</title>
    <!-- ... -->
</head>
<body>
    <!-- ... -->
    <h2>
        You bypassed the Cloudflare challenge! :D
    </h2>
    <!-- other content omitted for brevity -->
</body>
</html>

Congratulations 🎉! You just bypassed Cloudflare using the ZenRows scraper API.

Conclusion

In this article, you've learned four methods to bypass the "You Are Being Rate Limited" 1015 Error. Limiting your request frequency and rotating request headers are manual techniques that can increase the chances of avoiding this error. While premium proxies offer higher reliability than these two methods, they still don't cover other advanced detection techniques used by Cloudflare and may not always work.

The best method that guarantees a high success rate is using a web scraper API, such as ZenRows. It provides all the toolkits to bypass Cloudflare and any other anti-bot, allowing you to scrape any website without limitations.

Try ZenRows for free now without a credit card!