backoff (Python)
Python library for adding retry behavior with exponential backoff, full jitter, and custom wait strategies to functions using decorators. Simple API: @backoff.on_exception(backoff.expo, requests.exceptions.RequestException, max_tries=8) wraps any function with configurable retry logic. Supports sync and async functions, custom predicates, and retry hooks.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Retry library — no network access. Ensure retried operations don't leak credentials in exception messages.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
Adding retry logic to Python API clients with minimal code — one decorator line vs manual retry loops.
Avoid When
You need circuit breakers, bulkheads, or complex resilience patterns — use a full resilience library.
Use Cases
- • Add exponential backoff retries to HTTP API calls that may receive 429 or 503 responses
- • Implement retry logic for database connections or queries that may fail transiently
- • Retry AWS/GCP API calls that hit rate limits with configurable jitter to avoid thundering herd
- • Add conditional retry with @backoff.on_predicate to retry based on return value (not just exceptions)
- • Implement async retry loops for aiohttp or httpx API calls with backoff.on_exception on async functions
Not For
- • Complex retry workflows needing circuit breakers — use pybreaker or resilience4py for circuit breaker patterns
- • Production service-level retry policies — Kubernetes, service meshes (Istio), or load balancers handle infra-level retries better
- • Non-Python languages — language-specific retry libraries exist for Go (retry-go), Rust (backoff), etc.
Interface
Authentication
Pure Python library — no auth needed.
Pricing
MIT licensed open source library.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ backoff retries ALL matching exceptions — ensure only retriable exceptions are listed; retrying non-retriable errors (401 auth) wastes time
- ⚠ The decorator wraps the function permanently — all calls to the decorated function will retry; create separate retrying/non-retrying versions if needed
- ⚠ max_time is wall clock time from first call, not per-retry timeout — a long first attempt counts against max_time
- ⚠ on_backoff and on_giveup hooks receive a details dict with tries, elapsed, wait — use these for logging without modifying retry behavior
- ⚠ jitter=backoff.full_jitter is recommended for distributed systems to prevent thundering herd — default behavior may synchronize retries
- ⚠ async support requires async decorated functions — backoff detects async functions automatically but mixing sync/async in the same decorator causes issues
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.