How to force to compute for shipping rates

Retired Boards Appdev Subscriptions

Topic summary

A developer is trying to retrieve updated shipping rates for subscription orders when a customer changes their address. They want to force Shopify to recompute rates based on the new address.

Current Approach:

  • Using the shippingOptions field on a SubscriptionDraft object via GraphQL
  • Passing the new delivery address directly in the query parameters

Issues Encountered:

  • The query returns deliveryPrice as “0.0”
  • shippingOptions frequently returns an empty array
  • The API sometimes fails entirely or returns null responses, especially when there are many line items
  • Errors occur intermittently during processing

Recommended Solution:

  • Implement a retry mechanism to handle the unreliable API responses
  • This is acknowledged as one of the most challenging aspects of Shopify’s subscription APIs
  • The retry approach leads to slower processing and UI delays, but is currently necessary

Status: The issue remains unresolved with no definitive workaround beyond implementing retries to handle the API’s inconsistent behavior.

Summarized with AI on November 23. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

For subscription orders, is there a mutation to get a new shipping rate? For example, the customer changes their address. We’d like Shopify to recompute the rate based on the new address.

2

You can always grab the shipping options available on a SubscriptionDraft: https://shopify.dev/api/admin-graphql/2022-04/objects/SubscriptionDraft#field-subscriptiondraft-shippingoptions

That said - you’ll have to implement a retry mechanism bc it fails (or returns an empty array) often and if there are too many lines it fails every time.

3

Hi, @Brian_S_1 .

Here’s a sample GraphQL query I have. I’m passing in a Draft ID on it and a new address.

query ($id:ID!) {
    subscriptionDraft(id: $id) {
    deliveryPrice{
        amount
    }
    shippingOptions(
        deliveryAddress: {
            firstName: "Eric",
            lastName: "Test",
            address1: "4754 Irving Road",
            address2: "",
            city: "Athens",
            provinceCode: "OH",
            countryCode: US,
            zip: "45701"
        }
    ) {
        __typename
        ... on SubscriptionShippingOptionResultSuccess {
            shippingOptions {
                title
                presentmentTitle
                description
                code
                price {
                amount
                currencyCode
                }
            }
        }
    }
    id
    status
    }
}

Here’s the response from Postman.

{
    "data": {
        "subscriptionDraft": {
            "deliveryPrice": {
                "amount": "0.0"
            },
            "shippingOptions": {
                "__typename": "SubscriptionShippingOptionResultSuccess",
                "shippingOptions": []
            },
            "id": "gid://shopify/SubscriptionDraft/125750378712",
            "status": "ACTIVE"
        }
    },
    "extensions": {
        "cost": {
            "requestedQueryCost": 3,
            "actualQueryCost": 3,
            "throttleStatus": {
                "maximumAvailable": 10000.0,
                "currentlyAvailable": 9997,
                "restoreRate": 500.0
            }
        }
    }
}

I’m getting a “0.0” delivery price. Is this supposed to recompute the shipping rate?

4

@Brian_S_1 I get it now. We’re getting shippingOptions but it almost always returns empty array as seen in my snippet above.

5

That’s right. This is one of the most difficult parts of the subscription apis. There used to be Shopify docs around this stuff but I can’t find them now.

Sometimes the shipping options are empty, null and sometimes we get an error response.. we’ve just found that a retry mechanism is required and it leads to slower processing/UI