In an embodiment, a process for adaptive threshold estimation for streaming data includes determining initial positions for a set of percentile bins, receiving a new data item in a stream of data, and identifying one of the set of percentile bins corresponding to the new data item. The process includes incrementing a count of items in the identified percentile bin, adjusting one or more counts of data items in one or more of the percentile bins including by applying a suppression factor based on a relative ordering of items, and redistributing positions for the set of percentile bins to equalize respective count numbers of items for each percentile bin of the set of percentile bins. The process includes utilizing the redistributed positions of the set of percentile bins to determine a percentile distribution of the data stream, and calculating a threshold based at least in part on the percentiles distribution.