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# Workflow Retries Overview

Upstash Workflow provides an automatic retry mechanism to improve reliability and make workflows resilient against temporary failures.
Workflow automatically handles transient errors such as network issues or service unavailability.

## How Retries Work

When a step fails, Upstash Workflow automatically retries the failed step with configurable retry attempts and delay strategy.
This allows temporary issues to resolve without manual intervention.

<Frame caption="A failing step is automatically retried three times by default">
  <img src="/img/workflow/automatic_retry.png" alt="A failing step is automatically retried three times by default" />
</Frame>

By default, the retry count is set to **3**, and an **exponential backoff** delay strategy is used.

```javascript Default Backoff Algorithm
// n = how many times this request has been retried
delay = min(86400, e ** (2.5*n)) // in seconds
```

| Retry Attempt | Algorithm    | Delay  |
|---------------|--------------|--------|
| 1             | $$e^{2.5}$$  | 12s    |
| 2             | $$e^5$$      | 2m28s  |
| 3             | $$e^{7.5}$$  | 30m8s  |
| 4+            | $$86400$$    | 24h    |

## Configuration

You can configure retry behavior when starting a new workflow run.

### Configure Retry Attempt Count

You can specify how many times a step should be retried upon failure.

```typescript Configure Retry Attempt Count
import { Client } from "@upstash/workflow";

const client = new Client({ token: "<QSTASH_TOKEN>" })

const { workflowRunId } = await client.trigger({
  url: "https://<YOUR_WORKFLOW_ENDPOINT>/<YOUR-WORKFLOW-ROUTE>",
  retries: 3
})
```

### Configure Retry Delay Strategy

Retry delay is the time to wait before trying again after a failure. You can define a custom retry delay strategy.

The delay is defined as a math expression that is calculated on every retry.
The expression can use the `retried` variable, which represents how many times the step has already retried (starting from 0).

To apply a constant delay, you can simply provide a fixed value.

The expression must return the delay in **milliseconds**.

```typescript Configure Retry Delay Strategy
import { Client } from "@upstash/workflow";

const client = new Client({ token: "<QSTASH_TOKEN>" })

const { workflowRunId } = await client.trigger({
  url: "https://<YOUR_WORKFLOW_ENDPOINT>/<YOUR-WORKFLOW-ROUTE>",
  retries: 3,
  retryDelay: "(1 + retried) * 1000"
})
```

### Configure Retries for a Single Step

The retry configuration of a run applies to all of its steps. You can override it for a single `context.run`
step by passing `retries` and `retryDelay` as the third argument:

```typescript Configure Retries for a Single Step
export const { POST } = serve(async (context) => {
  await context.run(
    "call flaky service",
    () => callFlakyService(),
    {
      retries: 5,
      retryDelay: "1000",
    }
  );
});
```

Any field left unset falls back to the configuration the run was triggered with.
The step-level options can be combined with [step-level flow control](/workflow/features/flow-control#step-level-flow-control).