Are bulk queries really faster?

GraphQL Admin API Troubleshooting
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I ran some benchmarks, comparing bulk queries against standard queries + pagination, (using version 2025-04, so group objects was not yet available), and depending on the Shopify plan of the store, running standard queries were between 1.2x and 2x faster (for the standard limit and the Shopify plus or above limit respectively).

Additionally, bulk queries have a bunch of limitations, they only run on types that implement node, can only have a limited amount of connections, don’t accept variables, and more.

Given this, when does it even make sense to use a bulk query?

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Hey @SRCB, great question.

Bulk operations are run asynchronous so speed is not typically the main goal. If speed is important, standard queries + pagination is the way to go.

Bulk operations are built for those jobs that require a lot of data. Since they are running async, they aren’t using up your rate limits https://shopify.dev/docs/api/usage/limits#bulk-operations

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Additionally, bulk operations don’t apply to the rate limit bucket.

Which is very nice to know that your large queries won’t affect more real time mutations that need to be performed by your app.

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Also it depends on how many items you are looping over. Stores vary in size and scale so the performance of the standard queries compared to bulk will vary across these.
Looping over the pages can lead to timeouts etc depending on your application architecture

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