The invention refers to a system for real-time resource consumption control in a distributed environment and a corresponding method, the system comprising: a multitude of server instances (Sx) having access to shared resources, whereby each request for a shared resource issued by a client application (CA) is handled by one of the server instances (Sx); a global resource consumption counter (G), representing the overall resource consumption of the multitude of server instances (Sx) at a given time; and a multitude of proxy servers (Lx), each proxy server comprising —a receiver module (R) for receiving resource consumption requests issued from a client application (CA), —a resource consumption decision module (Dm) for accepting or rejecting a resource consumption request, —a queue (Q) for collecting resource consumption requests that have been locally accepted by the respective proxy server (Lx), —a local resource consumption counter (L), representing the global resource consumption as seen by the respective proxy server (Lx), said local resource consumption counter (L) being updated every time a resource consumption request is accepted by the decision module (Dm), the updated value being provided in turn as an input to the decision module (Dm), and —a synchronization module (S) for synchronizing the global resource consumption counter (G) by interfacing with all other server instances (Sx).