# If the content API is slow, does my page hang or fall back?

Asked by marta on 2026-08-24. Tags: performance, fallback, reliability.

I always plan for the worst case, and my worst case here is a slow
personalization call on a bad network. If the content API takes two seconds
to respond, does my render sit there and wait for it, or does something kick
in and serve default content?

Basically I want to understand the timeout behaviour and how quickly it falls
back so a slow dependency cannot block the page. Thanks in advance for any
detail.

## 2 answers

### Answer from lena_h (2026-08-25)

There is a timeout, and it is your ceiling on the wait. It is
`defaultFetchTimeout`, and the default differs by SDK: 5000ms in the
JavaScript SDK versus 2000ms in Next.js. So out of the box a Next.js route
will not wait longer than two seconds on a single fetch.

If two seconds is still too long for your worst case, lower it. Set it to
whatever your budget allows and the fetch cannot exceed that. The Next
default and how to change it are covered in
[the 2000ms fetch timeout default](/answers/nextjs-fetch-timeout-2000ms-default).

### Answer from marco_dev (2026-08-26)

And to answer the hang question directly: it does not hang. Fault tolerance
is built in, so when the timeout trips it serves default content instead of
waiting or erroring. You wire that with the `fallback` option on the fetch,
or a `.catch` that returns your default content, and it renders instantly on
timeout.

So the flow is: try to resolve, and if it does not come back in time, the
default paints and the page moves on. There is a walkthrough of the network
failure path in
[react fallback content on network failure](/answers/react-fallback-content-network-failure).

#### Reply from marta (2026-08-27)

Exactly what I needed. Lowering the timeout plus a fallback means the
worst case is a number I choose, not the network. Appreciate it.