4 policies
40 ms / px
cap 30 s

Four policies, one scale

Every bar below is drawn at 40 milliseconds to the pixel, the same constant the index lays its own gaps out at. Two of the four are on this page as controls rather than as products: they are how you can tell the doubling is real without being told it is.

A plant room at night: two pumps on concrete plinths under lagged pipework, one bulkhead lamp above them.
attempt 6 · ×64 light

policy
9 waits

Exponential

min(250 ms · 2ⁿ, 30 s)

The default. Each wait is twice the last until it reaches the cap.

0 250 ms
1 500 ms
2 1 s
3 2 s
4 4 s
5 8 s
6 16 s
7 30 s
8 30 s

Open exponential

policy
9 waits

Exponential, full jitter

random(0, min(250 ms · 2ⁿ, 30 s))

The same ceiling, but each job draws its own wait underneath it, so a queue that failed together does not come back together.

0 180 ms
1 431 ms
2 612 ms
3 1.7 s
4 2.29 s
5 6.8 s
6 9.54 s
7 21.43 s
8 12.09 s

Open exponential, full jitter

control
9 waits

Fixed

2 s

The same wait every time. On the page: nine identical gaps.

0 2 s
1 2 s
2 2 s
3 2 s
4 2 s
5 2 s
6 2 s
7 2 s
8 2 s

Open fixed

control
0 waits

None

One attempt. If it fails it is dead-lettered. There is no schedule to draw.

No bars. There is no schedule to draw.

Open none


A policy is set per queue and can be changed without a redeploy. The cap and the attempt count are the two figures that are fixed for everyone; see Limits.