ordersCount timeout on large shops

GraphQL Admin API Troubleshooting
1

API Version 2025-10

Calling ordersCount on large shops (2M+ orders is failing). This should be returning an exact/precision count within milliseconds. There are no filters adding complexity to the query.

message = Failed to complete in time.
extensions.code = TIMEOUT

The request hangs for 10 seconds and then spits out the error.

Shop + App have read_all_orders access scope as well.

Please fix this ASAP - we are too close to BFCM for this type of thing to not be working in Shopify APIs.

query OrdersCount {
  ordersCount(limit: null) {
    count
    precision
  }
}
2

Hi @releod

The main reason for this problem should be that the amount of data is too large and may not be resolved in the short term. It is recommended that you add filtering conditions and then calculate the total number of different conditions.

3

Hi Kyle

Thanks for replying.

Some more context, after seeing different results based on your reply.

The Rest API returns the full order count without any noticeable slowness.

The Graphql API returns the full order count on small stores.

On larger stores, I’ve found requesting the count for 2025, 2024, 2023, etc will return the count for each year very quickly.

After each year has been counted, I am suddenly able to make the ordersCount request again without any filters, and it magically returns the precision exact complete total.

This doesn’t make any sense from an API consumer perspective.

Seems like there is a caching issue.

The expectation is that this should just work on the first request, similar to how every other API request on the internet is made :man_shrugging: