Shopify API rates limits

Shopify applies several limits to using its API. These depend on your subscription level, and can affect the ability to perform updates on the website, and updates speed. 

The updated API limits can be found under https://shopify.dev/docs/api/usage/rate-limits

IN THIS ARTICLE

• Request rate limit
• Daily variation updates limit
• Recommendations

Request rate limit

The request rate limit defines the maximum number of updates that can be made by external applications in a given time. While uploading multiple products this results in longer processing times. 

The 2 requests/second limit means each request should be sent to Shopify every 0.5 seconds.

(!) Please mention that Shopify Plus has double faster processing times.

Please mention: according to Shopify's API structure, some product updates require Valigara to perform up to 144 API calls. On the 2 requests/second limit, this takes ca, 72 seconds. Additional time takes the request preparation, this can add ca. 47 seconds. Therefore, the total update can take up to 119 sec. (about 2 minutes).  

Daily variation updates limit

Shopify limits the count of Variants (variations) , which can be updated on a daily basis. Shopify allows posting up to 50,000 variations a day. More explanations are available in this Shopify community post.  

Recommendations

• Update products in bulk, instead of updating products 1-by-1. Updating 1 product and 100 products take about the same time. 
• When executing the "Run integration" operation in Valigara, consider running the operation in the "Specific fields" mode, and not "All fields". This can reduce the count of updates, and run the updates faster. This is especially important when updating the data related to variations.  

We continuously follow up on Shopify's development and identify opportunities to make posting/updating products faster.