Guides ยท Engineering
API Circuit Breaker Basics
Add circuit breakers to APIs
This guide explains circuit breaker patterns: failure thresholds, open/half-open states, fallback responses, and instrumentation to prevent overloaded downstream services.
- circuit breaker
- resilience
- timeouts
- fallback
- api
Set thresholds
Define failure/error rate and timeout limits that trip the breaker.
Handle states
Implement open, half-open, and closed states with backoff.
Provide fallbacks
Return graceful errors or cached data when downstream is unhealthy.
Instrument and alert
Log state changes and alert on frequent opens; tune thresholds.