REST Admin API rate limits

To ensure our platform remains stable and fair for everyone, the REST Admin API is rate-limited. We use a variety of strategies to enforce rate limits. We ask developers to use industry standard techniques for limiting calls, caching results, and re-trying requests responsibly.

Anchor to Key figuresKey figures

The following are the key figures for rate limiting in the REST Admin API:

• Rate-limiting method: Apps can make a maximum number of requests per minute. For example, 40 API requests within 60 seconds. Each request counts equally, regardless of how much or how little data is returned.

• Standard limit: 2 requests/second

• Advanced Shopify limit: 4 requests/second

• Shopify Plus limit: 20 requests/second

• Shopify for enterprise (Commerce Components): 40 requests/ second

  Shopify might temporarily reduce API rate limits to protect platform stability. We will strive to keep these instances brief and rare. However, your application should be built to handle limits gracefully.

Anchor to Rate limitsRate limits

Calls to the REST Admin API are governed by request-based limits, which means you should consider the total number of API calls your app makes. In addition, there are resource-based rate limits and throttles.

REST Admin API rate limits are based on the combination of the app and store. This means that calls from one app don't affect the rate limits of another app, even on the same store. Similarly, calls to one store don't affect the rate limits of another store, even from the same app.

Limits are calculated using a leaky bucket algorithm: each request drops a marble into a bucket that leaks at a fixed rate, so short bursts are fine as long as your average stays under the leak rate. All requests that are made after rate limits have been exceeded are throttled and an HTTP 429 Too Many Requests error is returned. Requests succeed again after enough requests have emptied out of the bucket. You can see the current state of the throttle for a store by using the rate limits header.

The bucket size and leak rate properties determine the API’s burst behavior and request rate.

The default settings are as follows:

• Bucket size: 40 requests/app/store

• Leak rate: 2/second

  Plus

  The bucket size and leak rate is increased by a factor of 10 for Shopify Plus stores:

  • Bucket size: 400 requests/app/store
  • Leak rate: 20/second

  If the bucket size is exceeded, then an HTTP 429 Too Many Requests error is returned. The bucket empties at a leak rate of two requests per second. To avoid being throttled, you can build your app to average two requests per second. The throttle is a pass or fail operation. If there is available capacity in your bucket, then the request is executed without queueing or processing delays. Otherwise, the request is throttled.

  There is an additional rate limit for GET requests. When the value of the page parameter results in an offset of over 100,000 of the requested resource, a 429 Too Many Requests error is returned. For example, a request to GET /admin/collects.json?limit=250&page=401 would generate an offset of 100,250 (250 x 401 = 100,250) and return a 429 response.

  Caution

  Page-based pagination was deprecated in the REST Admin API with version 2019-07. Use cursor-based pagination instead.

Anchor to Rate limits headerRate limits header

You can check how many requests you’ve already made using the Shopify X-Shopify-Shop-Api-Call-Limit header that was sent in response to your API request. This header lists how many requests you’ve made for a particular store. For example:

In this example, 32 is the current request count and 40 is the bucket size. The request count decreases according to the leak rate over time. For example, if the header displays 39/40 requests, then after a wait period of ten seconds, the header displays 19/40 requests.

Anchor to Retry-After headerRetry-After header

When a request goes over a rate limit, a 429 Too Many Requests error and a Retry-After header are returned. The Retry-After header contains the number of seconds to wait until you can make a request again. Any request made before the wait time has elapsed is throttled.

Anchor to Resource-based rate limitsResource-based rate limits

Once a store has 500,000 product variants, no more than 10,000 new variants can be created per day, on any API.

Past that threshold, the following REST Admin API endpoints are subject to the daily throttle, and an app that reaches it receives a 429 Too Many Requests response with a message that a throttle has been applied.

• admin/products.json
• admin/products/{product_id}.json
• admin/products/{product_id}/variants.json

In certain cases, Shopify needs to enforce rate limiting in order to prevent abuse of the platform. Therefore, your app should be prepared to handle rate limiting on all endpoints, rather than just those listed here.

Anchor to Avoiding rate limit errorsAvoiding rate limit errors

The practices for staying under a rate limit are the same on every Shopify API. Refer to avoiding rate limit errors.