Workflows slow down after many iterations in browser

Questions
1

Describe the problem/error/question

I have a number of workflows that run in loops. Typically the first few times through the loop it’ll complete in a few seconds. But after the loop has been running for a while it slows to a crawl. It can be seconds between each module “lighting up” and executing.

I have tried changing the settings so it doesn’t save progress, but that doesn’t seem to have an effect.

Any tricks or tips to get long-running workflows to run at a consistent pace?

Please share your workflow

Share the output returned by the last node

N/A

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version: 1.59.3
  • Database (default: SQLite): PostgreSQL
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main): main
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): npm
  • Operating system: Ubuntu
2

Two ideas come to mind

  1. High browser memory load
    Assuming you are running this manually - hence why you can see the slow down, it could just be as more loops complete and data is fed back into the UI, your browser is experiencing a high memory usage and the slow-down is just visual. Good way to check is if a scheduled trigger execution takes the same time overall as a manual trigger execution?
  2. External API requests throttled
    Noticed you’re interacting with external APIs without any throttling in place which usually means your workflow will send a lot of requests in a short amout of time. If the external service doesn’t deny requests based on rate limits, it could be that the service becomes busy and your requests are queued. Just a theory however but pacing your requests eg. using a loop + wait node, might help.
3

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