Lambda function is nearing timeout

Why do I see this? One of your functions has been nearing the limit of 90% during the last 30 minutes. What does this mean? When you deploy a Lambda function, you need to configure a timeout. After the configured time, the Lambda service will force your function to stop. For your function, this will […]

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Why do I see this?

One of your functions has been nearing the limit of 90% during the last 30 minutes.

What does this mean?

When you deploy a Lambda function, you need to configure a timeout. After the configured time, the Lambda service will force your function to stop. For your function, this will have a similar effect as a crash.

This event notifies you of the risk before it realizes. So you have some time to increase your timeout configuration before your function starts to throw errors.

How do I fix “Lambda function is nearing timeout”?

Increase the timeout of your Lambda function when deploying it.

You usually want a timeout that is as low as possible, so your functions don’t cost you money when waiting too long for something. Waiting could be caused by an endless loop or a downstream API that takes too long to respond.

If your timeout is too long, you can also end up with too many concurrent Lambda invocations and hit the concurrency limit, which will lead to failing invocations.

If your function has an upper bound to its time complexity, you can use the Lambda Power Tuning tool to determine what that bound is.

If your function’s execution time is potentially unbound, for example, when you don’t know how much data it will work on, you have to split the data up into multiple invocations. SNS, SQS, Kinesis, or Step Functions can help here.


This rule resolution is part of the Dashbird Serverless Well-Architected Reports tool for AWS. Dashbird features a collection of rules and checks continuously applied to your infrastructure, surfacing ways to improve it.Catch errors and inefficiencies in Lambda and learn the best practice rules for AWS Lambda.

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