A request filtration system that implements techniques to reduce load on a downstream service by efficiently filtering requests before they are processed by the downstream service. The request filtration system may be used by a request processing system to eliminate requests that satisfy any of one or more filters. For example, each filter specifies one or more attributes that may apply to one or more requests. If a request satisfies a filter, then the request is not considered by the downstream service or a content item does not need to be selected by the request processing system in response to the request.