request.timeout.ms — Kafka Broker Configuration
The configuration controls the maximum amount of time the client will wait for the response of a request. If the response is not received before the timeout elapses the client will resend the request if necessary or fail the request if retries are exhausted.
Description
The configuration controls the maximum amount of time the client will wait for the response of a request. If the response is not received before the timeout elapses the client will resend the request if necessary or fail the request if retries are exhausted.
Default Values by Kafka Version
| Kafka Version | Default Value |
|---|---|
| 0.9.0 | 30000 |
| 0.10.0 | 30000 |
| 0.10.1 | 30000 |
| 0.10.2 | 30000 |
| 0.11.0 | 30000 |
| 1.0 | 30000 |
| 1.1 | 30000 |
| 2.0 | 30000 |
| 2.1 | 30000 |
| 2.2 | 30000 |
| 2.3 | 30000 |
| 2.4 | 30000 |
| 2.5 | 30000 |
| 2.6 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 2.7 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 2.8 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.0 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.1 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.2 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.3 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.4 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.5 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.6 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.7 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.8 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 3.9 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 4.0 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 4.1 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
| 4.2 | 30000 (30 seconds) |
Tuning Recommendation
| Profile | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| producer / throughput | 30000 | The 30s default is appropriate for high-throughput; reducing it causes premature TimeoutExceptions under momentary broker GC pauses, while increasing it delays retry decisions and wastes delivery.timeout.ms budget. |
| producer / latency | 5000 | Reducing the per-request timeout to 5s causes the producer to fail fast and surface broker-side stalls quickly rather than silently queueing for 30s; this keeps application-level latency predictable and triggers circuit-breaker logic sooner. |
| producer / durability | 30000 | 30s gives brokers ample time to write to disk and replicate to ISR members under normal load; reducing it causes spurious timeouts during ISR resync under sustained load spikes, triggering unnecessary retries and inflating tail latency. |
| consumer / latency | 15000 | Reducing the request timeout to 15s makes the consumer fail-fast on unresponsive brokers rather than waiting 30s before surfacing an error. In a latency-sensitive pipeline, a hung broker should be bypassed quickly so the consumer can reconnect to a replica or another broker. |
| consumer / durability | 30000 | The 30s default provides adequate time for broker responses under load, including coordinator elections and slow offset commits. Reducing it risks premature timeout on legitimate commit operations, causing the consumer to retry the commit without knowing if the first attempt succeeded — a silent source of duplicate commits. |
Related Configs
delivery.timeout.ms · linger.ms · retries · connections.max.idle.ms · session.timeout.ms
Manage Kafka configs across all your clusters with Conduktor Console — view, compare, and update configurations in one place.