Products Metafield API Rate Limit

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

A developer is experiencing rate limit issues when fetching product metafields via the Shopify API.

The Integration Flow:

  • Uses Shopify webhooks to receive product update events
  • Calls the metafields endpoint (/admin/api/{api-version}/products/{id}/metafields.json) for each product update
  • Product updates occur in quick succession, triggering frequent API calls

Key Question:
The developer seeks clarification on whether Shopify’s API rate limits are:

  • Applied per individual endpoint, OR
  • Enforced at the store/access token level

Understanding the rate limit scope would help them optimize their integration strategy to avoid hitting limits during high-volume product updates. The discussion remains open with no responses yet.

Summarized with AI on October 24. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

I have an integration that uses Shopify webhooks to receive product update events. For each product update, I’m calling the metafields endpoint to fetch the product’s metafields:

/admin/api/{api-version}/products/{id}/metafields.json

Since these updates can happen in quick succession, I’m running into rate limit issues when fetching metafields. Could someone clarify whether Shopify’s API rate limits are applied per endpoint, or if they’re enforced at the store/access token level?