Ok, there’s no way to do what I asked without any writes to the server, but I can at least eliminate logging every single request. One way is by using the “leaky bucket” throttling method, where it only keeps track of the last request ($last_api_request) and a ratio of the number of requests/limit for the time frame ($minute_throttle). The leaky bucket never resets its counter (unlike the Twitter API’s throttle which resets every hour), but if the bucket becomes full (user reached the limit), they must wait n seconds for the bucket to empty a little before they can make another request. In other words it’s like a rolling limit: if there are previous requests within the time frame, they are slowly leaking out of the bucket; it only restricts you if you fill the bucket.

This code snippet will calculate a new $minute_throttle value on every request. I specified the minute in $minute_throttle because you can add throttles for any time period, such as hourly, daily, etc… although more than one will quickly start to make it confusing for the users.

$minute = 60;
$minute_limit = 100; # users are limited to 100 requests/minute
$last_api_request = $this->get_last_api_request(); # get from the DB; in epoch seconds
$last_api_diff = time() - $last_api_request; # in seconds
$minute_throttle = $this->get_throttle_minute(); # get from the DB
if ( is_null( $minute_limit ) ) {
    $new_minute_throttle = 0;
} else {
    $new_minute_throttle = $minute_throttle - $last_api_diff;
    $new_minute_throttle = $new_minute_throttle < 0 ? 0 : $new_minute_throttle;
    $new_minute_throttle += $minute / $minute_limit;
    $minute_hits_remaining = floor( ( $minute - $new_minute_throttle ) * $minute_limit / $minute  );
    # can output this value with the request if desired:
    $minute_hits_remaining = $minute_hits_remaining >= 0 ? $minute_hits_remaining : 0;
}

if ( $new_minute_throttle > $minute ) {
    $wait = ceil( $new_minute_throttle - $minute );
    usleep( 250000 );
    throw new My_Exception ( 'The one-minute API limit of ' . $minute_limit 
        . ' requests has been exceeded. Please wait ' . $wait . ' seconds before attempting again.' );
}
# Save the values back to the database.
$this->save_last_api_request( time() );
$this->save_throttle_minute( $new_minute_throttle );