Question: Why is my on-demand DynamoDB table being throttled?

My on-demand Amazon DynamoDB table is being throttled.

Short descriptionYour DynamoDB on-demand table might be throttled due to one of the following common reasons:The traffic is more than double the previous peak.The traffic exceeds the per-partition maximum.The traffic exceeds the per-table account quota.The global secondary index of your table is being throttled.

ResolutionDynamoDB tables that use on-demand capacity mode automatically adapt to your application’s traffic volume. However, tables that use the on-demand mode might still throttle.The traffic is more than double the previous peakIf you exceed double your previous traffic's peak within 30 minutes, then you might experience throttling. Before you exceed your previous traffic's peak, it's a best practice to spread your traffic growth over at least 30 minutes. Use the ConsumedReadCapacityUnits metric in Amazon CloudWatch to monitor traffic to the table. For more information, see DynamoDB metrics and dimensions.For new on-demand tables, you can immediately drive up to 4,000 write request units or 12,000 read request units, or a linear combination of both. For an existing table that you switched to on-demand capacity mode, the previous peak is either half the previous provisioned throughput for the table. Or, the previous peak is the settings for a newly created table with on-demand capacity mode.For more information, see Initial throughput for on-demand capacity mode.The traffic exceeds the per-partition maximumEach partition on the table can serve up to 3,000 read request units or 1,000 write request units, or a linear combination of both. If the traffic to a partition exceeds this limit, then the partition might be throttled. To resolve this issue, take the following actions:Use CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB to identify the most frequently accessed and throttled keys in your table.Randomize the requests to the table so that the requests to the hot partition keys are distributed over time. For more information, see Using write sharding to distribute workloads evenly.The traffic exceeds the per-table account quotaFor on-demand tables, the table-level read throughput and table-level write throughput quotas apply at the account level. By default, the table throughput is set to a maximum of 40,000 read requests units and a maximum of 40,000 write requests units. If the traffic to a table exceeds the per-table account quotas for throughput, then the table might be throttled. To resolve this issue, use the Service Quotas console to increase the table-level read throughput and write throughput quotas for your account.The global secondary index of your table is being throttledIf your DynamoDB table has a secondary global index that's being throttled, then the throttling might create back pressure throttles on the base table. For more information, see How does throttling on my global secondary index affect my Amazon DynamoDB table? and Using global secondary indexes in DynamoDB.

Related informationPeak traffic and scaling propertiesHow do I choose the right primary key for my Amazon DynamoDB table?Why are the metrics on the DynamoDB console different from the CloudWatch metrics?Service, account, and table quotas in Amazon DynamoDB