The request exceeded the maximum allowed time, please try again. If the issue persists, please contact planetarycomputer@microsoft.com.

[Ethan-Chen421]

Description

Requests are consistently timing out with the error “The request exceeded the maximum allowed time”. This issue has been ongoing for 48 hours and occurs frequently, making the Planetary Computer service nearly unusable. This type of error also appears on the official website. I wonder if there's another surge in visit.

Error message

The request exceeded the maximum allowed time, please try again.
If the issue persists, please contact planetarycomputer@microsoft.com.

Steps to reproduce

1. Call the Planetary Computer API (e.g., via the planetary-computer SDK or direct request to /api/stac/v1/... endpoints);
2. Wait for the response;
3. The above timeout error is returned, and the request fails.

Note: The issue occurs across different endpoints and at different times, with a very low success rate.

Expected behavior

Requests should complete successfully within a reasonable time, not time out consistently.

Actual behavior

The vast majority of requests fail due to exceeding the maximum allowed time. The service has been effectively unavailable for about 48 hours.

Environment

• Service: Microsoft Planetary Computer (Hub / API)
• Access method: Python SDK (planetary-computer) / direct HTTP requests
• Region: Europe Central
• First observed: Around 2026-06-07 (ongoing)

Additional context

• Retries (including exponential backoff) have been attempted without success.
• Other users may be experiencing the same issue Planetary Computer API issuing pre-expired tokens #463
• No known workaround – the service is essentially unusable.

Request for assistance

Please investigate the backend status of Planetary Computer, specifically:

• Whether API gateway or load balancer timeouts are too short, or backend responses are too slow;
• Possible resource bottlenecks (database, STAC index, storage account throttling);
• Any recent deployment changes or regional outages.

Thank you.

[gary-downforce]

I'm also having issues directly reading STAC items via the API, so can confirm this isn't just a search issue. I get HTTP 504 errors

• Exponential backoff in place for requests
• Token caching and exponential backoff in place for SAS (although no token required at this point, I'm not loading any assets yet)

[natborn2]

I'm having the same issue with the API, specifically when querying the "harmonized landsat sentinel-2" collections. When I query other collections such as "Sentinel-2 L2A" it works as expected.

[Ethan-Chen421]

I'm also having issues directly reading STAC items via the API, so can confirm this isn't just a search issue. I get HTTP 504 errors

• Exponential backoff in place for requests
• Token caching and exponential backoff in place for SAS (although no token required at this point, I'm not loading any assets yet)

I wonder if there's been a huge surge in traffic causing these issues. The frequency of these problems has been increasing over the past year

[Ethan-Chen421]

I'm having the same issue with the API, specifically when querying the "harmonized landsat sentinel-2" collections. When I query other collections such as "Sentinel-2 L2A" it works as expected.

We really need an official announcement from the support team. What exactly is causing these issues? I've already emailed them, but they still haven't gotten back to me

[gary-downforce]

I'm also having issues directly reading STAC items via the API, so can confirm this isn't just a search issue. I get HTTP 504 errors

• Exponential backoff in place for requests
• Token caching and exponential backoff in place for SAS (although no token required at this point, I'm not loading any assets yet)

I wonder if there's been a huge surge in traffic causing these issues. The frequency of these problems has been increasing over the past year

It looks like Planetary Computer Pro recently went to general availability, so maybe that's it. Would be nice to have an update, or even a status page.

[DiegoMCastellari]

Same problem here. I use the API in a pipeline that automatically downloads images for specific defined tiles and then calculates NDVI for them. The last time I ran it (like a month ago), the pipeline was working fine, I got this error occasionally, but now I can only download the first few images and then get this error for the rest.
I tried making the tiles smaller (they're already small) and narrowing the time range, but nothing helped.