Can I bulk create products using a single Shopify API request?

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1

I’m working on integrating our inventory system with Shopify and noticed something odd. While the Shopify API lets you fetch up to 250 items at once when downloading product lists or collections, it seems like you can only create one product per API call.

This creates a huge bottleneck for bulk operations. For example, if I have 15,000 products to upload along with 150 collections, downloading everything would only need about 120 API calls total. But uploading the same data would require over 30,000 individual calls.

With Shopify’s rate limit of 500 calls per 5-minute window, uploading would take roughly 5 hours compared to just a few minutes for downloading. This seems really inefficient for stores trying to sync with external inventory systems.

Has anyone found a workaround for this? Is there actually a way to batch create products that I’m missing in the documentation? Or do I really need to build a service that just hammers the API all day long to keep things in sync?

2

Unfortunately, Shopify’s REST API doesn’t do bulk product creation - each product needs its own POST call, which is your bottleneck. There are a few ways to work around this though. The GraphQL Admin API is better than REST for complex operations, but it still won’t solve bulk creation. What’s worked for me is setting up a proper queue system with exponential backoff to handle rate limits more smoothly instead of just making sequential API calls. For initial bulk uploads, try Shopify’s CSV import feature, then use the API for ongoing sync. Most successful integrations I’ve seen treat the initial bulk upload as completely separate from real-time sync operations.

3

totally agree! it’s super frustrating to deal with these limits. batch uploads would save us all a ton of time. for now, just gotta play the waiting game and manage the calls, fingers crossed for changes in the future!