Shopify API Response Timeout Limits

Retired Boards Appdev Graphql Basics And Troubleshooting

Topic summary

Question centers on whether Shopify has general API response time or read timeout limits for fetching resources like orders and products.

Reports indicate frequent timeouts and errors (including HTTP 502 and unexpected HTML responses) during mutation requests even within cost limits, with mass metafield updates proving unreliable.

Guidance provided focuses on rate limiting rather than timeouts: Admin REST API uses a leaky bucket algorithm with bucket size 40 requests per app per store (80 for Plus) and a leak rate of 2 requests/second (4/second for Plus). This is a request-based limit per app and merchant.

Leaky bucket manages request rate (throttling) and not explicit response timeouts; no concrete timeout values or per-resource read timeout limits were provided in the discussion.

For large-volume metafield mutations, recommended using GraphQL Bulk Operations via bulkOperationRunMutation to process data asynchronously; these operations aren’t subject to the standard rate limits.

Outcome: actionable workaround (bulk operations). Status: no definitive answer on response timeout limits; the issue remains open.

Summarized with AI on February 7. AI used: gpt-5.
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Hi Everyone,

May I ask what is the general API response time limit for fetching data (e.g: orders and products) or is there any read timeout limits on each resource?

Looking forward for your response.

Kind Regards,

Spaceship Tech

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Whatever it is, it’s abysmal. My mutation requests that are well within the cost limits timeout all the time. Even after I significantly reduced the size of the payload! Lots of them get 502s or straight HTML responses too. Trying to mutate metafields en-masse? Good luck.

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Hi @spaceshiptech :waving_hand:

I’d recommend checking out the rate limits for different APIs here, since they differ in the limiting methods and the type of merchant. Since you’ve tagged Admin REST API, it would be a request-based limit per app and per merchant. All Shopify APIs use a leaky bucket algorithm to manage requests, and for Admin REST API the settings would be:

  • Bucket size: 40 requests/app/store for standard merchants (80 requests/app/store for Plus)
  • Leak rate: 2/second for standard merchants (4/second for Plus)

Hope that helps!

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Thanks for the feedback @CameronKaiser :slightly_smiling_face:

I can certainly understand the challenge with mutating a large volume of metafields, and I’d recommend using the bulkOperationRunMutation in these cases. Bulk operations are designed to handle large volumes of data asynchronously, and does not follow the standard rate limits.

Hope that helps!