# 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" />
</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"
})
```