Limit Azure OpenAI API token usage
APPLIES TO: Developer | Basic | Basic v2 | Standard | Standard v2 | Premium | Premium v2
The azure-openai-token-limit
policy prevents Azure OpenAI Service API usage spikes on a per key basis by limiting consumption of language model tokens to a specified number per minute. When the token usage is exceeded, the caller receives a 429 Too Many Requests
response status code.
By relying on token usage metrics returned from the OpenAI endpoint, the policy can accurately monitor and enforce limits in real time. The policy also enables precalculation of prompt tokens by API Management, minimizing unnecessary requests to the OpenAI backend if the limit is already exceeded.
Note
Set the policy's elements and child elements in the order provided in the policy statement. Learn more about how to set or edit API Management policies.
Supported Azure OpenAI Service models
The policy is used with APIs added to API Management from the Azure OpenAI Service of the following types:
API type | Supported models |
---|---|
Chat completion | gpt-3.5 gpt-4 |
Completion | gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct |
Embeddings | text-embedding-3-large text-embedding-3-small text-embedding-ada-002 |
For more information, see Azure OpenAI Service models.
Policy statement
<azure-openai-token-limit counter-key="key value"
tokens-per-minute="number"
estimate-prompt-tokens="true | false"
retry-after-header-name="custom header name, replaces default 'Retry-After'"
retry-after-variable-name="policy expression variable name"
remaining-tokens-header-name="header name"
remaining-tokens-variable-name="policy expression variable name"
tokens-consumed-header-name="header name"
tokens-consumed-variable-name="policy expression variable name" />
Attributes
Attribute | Description | Required | Default |
---|---|---|---|
counter-key | The key to use for the token limit policy. For each key value, a single counter is used for all scopes at which the policy is configured. Policy expressions are allowed. | Yes | N/A |
tokens-per-minute | The maximum number of tokens consumed by prompt and completion per minute. | Yes | N/A |
estimate-prompt-tokens | Boolean value that determines whether to estimate the number of tokens required for a prompt: - true : estimate the number of tokens based on prompt schema in API; may reduce performance. - false : don't estimate prompt tokens. When set to false , the remaining tokens per counter-key are calculated using the actual token usage from the response of the model. This could result in prompts being sent to the model that exceed the token limit. In such case, this will be detected in the response, and all succeeding requests will be blocked by the policy until the token limit frees up again. |
Yes | N/A |
retry-after-header-name | The name of a custom response header whose value is the recommended retry interval in seconds after the specified tokens-per-minute is exceeded. Policy expressions aren't allowed. |
No | Retry-After |
retry-after-variable-name | The name of a variable that stores the recommended retry interval in seconds after the specified tokens-per-minute is exceeded. Policy expressions aren't allowed. |
No | N/A |
remaining-tokens-header-name | The name of a response header whose value after each policy execution is the number of remaining tokens allowed for the time interval. Policy expressions aren't allowed. | No | N/A |
remaining-tokens-variable-name | The name of a variable that after each policy execution stores the number of remaining tokens allowed for the time interval. Policy expressions aren't allowed. | No | N/A |
tokens-consumed-header-name | The name of a response header whose value is the number of tokens consumed by both prompt and completion. The header is added to response only after the response is received from backend. Policy expressions aren't allowed. | No | N/A |
tokens-consumed-variable-name | The name of a variable initialized to the estimated number of tokens in the prompt in backend section of pipeline if estimate-prompt-tokens is true and zero otherwise. The variable is updated with the reported count upon receiving the response in outbound section. |
No | N/A |
Usage
- Policy sections: inbound
- Policy scopes: global, workspace, product, API, operation
- Gateways: classic, v2, self-hosted, workspace
Usage notes
- This policy can be used multiple times per policy definition.
- This policy can optionally be configured when adding an API from the Azure OpenAI Service using the portal.
- Where available when
estimate-prompt-tokens
is set tofalse
, values in the usage section of the response from the Azure OpenAI Service API are used to determine token usage. - Certain Azure OpenAI endpoints support streaming of responses. When
stream
is set totrue
in the API request to enable streaming, prompt tokens are always estimated, regardless of the value of theestimate-prompt-tokens
attribute. Completion tokens are also estimated when responses are streamed. - API Management uses a single counter for each
counter-key
value that you specify in the policy. The counter is updated at all scopes at which the policy is configured with that key value. If you want to configure separate counters at different scopes (for example, a specific API or product), specify different key values at the different scopes. For example, append a string that identifies the scope to the value of an expression.
Example
In the following example, the token limit of 5000 per minute is keyed by the caller IP address. The policy doesn't estimate the number of tokens required for a prompt. After each policy execution, the remaining tokens allowed for that caller IP address in the time period are stored in the variable remainingTokens
.
<policies>
<inbound>
<base />
<azure-openai-token-limit
counter-key="@(context.Request.IpAddress)"
tokens-per-minute="5000" estimate-prompt-tokens="false" remaining-tokens-variable-name="remainingTokens" />
</inbound>
<outbound>
<base />
</outbound>
</policies>
Related policies
Related content
For more information about working with policies, see:
- Tutorial: Transform and protect your API
- Policy reference for a full list of policy statements and their settings
- Policy expressions
- Set or edit policies
- Reuse policy configurations
- Policy snippets repo
- Azure API Management policy toolkit
- Author policies using Microsoft Copilot in Azure