Shopify rate limits

Shopify Rate Limits

Overview

Shopify uses two distinct rate limiting systems: leaky bucket for REST and calculated query cost for GraphQL. This skill covers both with real header values and response shapes.

Prerequisites

• Understanding of Shopify's REST and GraphQL Admin APIs
• Familiarity with the @shopify/shopify-api library

Instructions

Step 1: Understand the Two Rate Limit Systems

REST Admin API -- Leaky Bucket:

Plan	Bucket Size	Leak Rate
Standard	40 requests	2/second
Shopify Plus	80 requests	4/second

The X-Shopify-Shop-Api-Call-Limit header shows your bucket state (e.g., 32/40 means 32 of 40 slots used). When full, you get HTTP 429 with Retry-After header.

GraphQL Admin API -- Calculated Query Cost:

Plan	Max Available	Restore Rate
Standard	1,000 points	50 points/second
Shopify Plus	2,000 points	100 points/second

Every GraphQL response includes cost info in extensions.cost with requestedQueryCost (worst-case estimate), actualQueryCost (real cost, often much lower), and throttleStatus (available points and restore rate). When currentlyAvailable drops to 0, you get THROTTLED.

Step 2: Implement GraphQL Cost-Aware Throttling

Client-side rate limiter that tracks the query cost bucket and pre-emptively waits before sending requests that would be throttled. Updates available points from each response's throttleStatus.

See Cost-Aware Rate Limiter for the complete ShopifyRateLimiter class.

Step 3: Implement Retry with Backoff for 429s

Generic retry wrapper handling both REST 429 responses and GraphQL THROTTLED errors. Uses Retry-After header when available, otherwise exponential backoff with jitter (max 30s).

See Retry with Backoff for the complete implementation.

Step 4: Reduce Query Cost

Prune unused fields and lower first: page sizes to reduce requestedQueryCost. A query dropping from first: 250 to first: 50 with fewer nested fields can go from ~5,500 to ~112 cost.

See Query Cost Reduction for before/after examples and the debug curl command.

Output

• Rate limit-aware client that prevents 429 errors
• Retry logic with proper backoff for both REST and GraphQL
• Optimized queries with lower calculated cost
• Debug headers for cost analysis

Error Handling

Scenario	REST Indicator	GraphQL Indicator
Approaching limit	X-Shopify-Shop-Api-Call-Limit: 38/40	currentlyAvailable < 100
At limit	HTTP 429 + Retry-After: 2.0	errors[0].extensions.code: "THROTTLED"
Recovering	Wait for Retry-After seconds	Wait for restoreRate to refill

Examples

Queue-Based Bulk Operations

For large data exports, use Shopify's bulk query API which bypasses rate limits entirely:

import PQueue from "p-queue";

const BULK_QUERY = `
  mutation bulkOperationRunQuery($query: String!) {
    bulkOperationRunQuery(query: $query) {
      bulkOperation { id status url }
      userErrors { field message }
    }
  }
`;

await client.request(BULK_QUERY, {
  variables: {
    query: `{
      products {
        edges {
          node {
            id title
            variants { edges { node { id sku price } } }
          }
        }
      }
    }`,
  },
});

Resources

• Shopify API Rate Limits
• REST Rate Limits
• GraphQL Rate Limits
• Bulk Operations