Home
  • Mobile App Help
  • All About PayPal
  • My Account
  • My Financials
  • My Money
  • Payments
  • Claims and Limitations
  • Products & Services
  • PayPal Merchant Services
  • Tax Information and Reporting
  • Non-Profits and Donations

How long is the IPN timeout length?

PayPal's Instant Payment Notification (IPN) system expects your webserver to send an HTTP 200 response when the IPN is sent to your IPN script.

If your server doesn't respond after a certain amount of time, the IPN system then re-posts the IPN to your script.

The amount of time between each re-post doubles each time: 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 40 seconds, 80 seconds, and so on, up to a maximum of 24 hours. The IPN system stops re-posting when:
  • PayPal receives a basic HTTP "200 OK" response from your web server, or
  • When approximately four days have passed since the initial post.

Note: This functionality applies to both Sandbox and Live accounts.

See also:
How do I troubleshoot IPN?
Why didn't I receive any IPN posts?
 
Was this article helpful?

More ways we can help

How are we doing?
Take our survey

We'll use cookies to improve and customise your experience if you continue to browse. Is it OK if we also use cookies to show you personalised ads? Learn more and manage your cookies