What is the Token Bucket Algorithm? The token bucket algorithm is a rate limiting algorithm, which is the opposite implementation of the leaky bucket algorithm. The leaky bucket algorithm leaks at a certain frequency rate, and our requests can be imagined as the faucet above. The token bucket algorithm, on the other hand, periodically puts tokens into the bucket, and each request will get a token from the token bucket. If there are no tokens in the bucket, the request is rejected or blocked until a token can be obtained.