Getting 422 error from /cart/add.js even though product is in stock

[KaalTechGeeks]

Hey everyone,

I came across this post on the Shopify Community where a merchant mentioned that customers weren’t able to add products to their cart.

When I looked into it, I saw they were using the /cart/update.js endpoint to add products, and it was returning a 422 error from Shopify’s Cart AJAX API mentioning that the product is sold out.

I checked the product JSON using the /products/{handle}.js endpoint, and here’s what I found (screenshot below):

• The product is clearly visible on the storefront and marked as available.
• I’m using the correct variant ID in the API call.
• The variant is marked as available: true, with a positive inventory count.
• Both the product and the variant are published to the Online Store channel.

I tried changing the api to add.js but still faced the same issue.

That caught my attention, so I decided to dig deeper into the issue and reached out to Shopify support about this, but they said they couldn’t assist further and suggested hiring a Shopify developer instead.

The reason this stood out to me is because I am a Shopify developer, and this is the first time I’ve come across something like this. Given that the API call is correctly structured and the product is in stock and live on the store, this kind of error shouldn’t really happen — yet it is.

So I’m hoping someone here has encountered this before?

Would love to hear your thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

[George_De_Bhal]

Hey there,

We are having the same issue with a new website launch. Did you find a fix for this?

[KaalTechGeeks]

Hey @George_De_Bhal
Nope no one ever responded back on this thread

[bruno_m]

Hello everyone,

Have you managed to resolve this issue in your respective stores?
This issue recently started occurring in my development store.

[Benny_Chan]

Same here. Is it possible that another app sets a limit on this product/variant, but we can’t see it on the product admin?

Or is there a cart validation set to that product/variant? Did you install any third party app like minmaxify order limit?

[musa_akdeniz]

Hey, i just solved this, same problem. It gives this error because i’ve tried to make request with product.id, shopify expects variant id’s like this kind of api requests. For examaple product.variants[0].id, this was my problem and variant id fixed it, i hope it fixes yours too.

Note: i see you mentioned about variant id’s, but it gives same error if variant id is wrong too, thats why i wanted to point out.

[tim_tairli]

The error happens when there is no location which can ship the item.

Even though the variant is published, available for sale and so on, adding to cart returns 422.

This is unfortunately is very counterintuitive and IMO is not really documented.

[LIVEARf]

Same issue we are also facing

[LIVEARf]

Intermittent 422 error when adding newly created variant to cart via /cart/add.js

Hi everyone, I’m facing an intermittent issue when creating a product variant dynamically via the Admin API and immediately adding it to the cart using /cart/add.js. What I’m doing Backend creates a new product + variant (used for add-ons / custom products). Backend sends the newly created variant_id to the frontend. Frontend calls: POST /cart/add.js Sometimes it works, but very often it fails with 422 Unprocessable Entity. Important observations GET /variants/{variant_id}.j…

[Only_Solutions]

Hi Rajasekar, I just wanted to chime in and say we are observing this same issue and your observations are consistent with what we are seeing. Up to about a month ago we were able to dynamically create products without this problem. We are currently using the delay technique.

[Only_Solutions]

We have a client using GraphQL API 2025-01 that seems to not be affected by this issue, but our clients using 2026-01 are having this issue.