Exponential backoff
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What is Exponential backoff?
A retry schedule that increases the waiting time by multiplying it after successive failures.
Backoff gives a struggling service time to recover. For example, a signup-email worker might wait one second, then two, then four before trying again. These are illustrative waits, not universal settings. Cap the delay and attempts, and add jitter, a small random variation that stops many workers retrying at once.
When you would use it
Use it when temporary failures or request limits make immediate repeated calls unhelpful.
Common operations
- Increase the delay between retries.
- Cap attempts and randomize the waiting time.