--- title: Should retries and timeouts live in your application or... description: A concise take on where resiliency logic — retries, timeouts, circuit breakers — should live in a distributed system. Platform components like service meshes... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/should-retries-and-timeouts-live-in-your-application-or-your-service-mesh--imcs5sbvy twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Should retries and timeouts live in your application or your service mesh? | daily.dev og:description: A concise take on where resiliency logic — retries, timeouts, circuit breakers — should live in a distributed system. Platform components like service meshes... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/should-retries-and-timeouts-live-in-your-application-or-your-service-mesh--imcs5sbvy og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ImCs5Sbvy.png og:image:alt: Should retries and timeouts live in your application or your service mesh? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Should retries and timeouts live in your application or your service mesh? **[ITNEXT](https://daily.dev/sources/itnext)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A concise take on where resiliency logic — retries, timeouts, circuit breakers — should live in a distributed system. Platform components like service meshes and API gateways handle generic traffic-level concerns well, but they lack business context. When a retry decision depends on idempotency, partial processing, or compensating transactions, it becomes a business decision that belongs in the application. The recommended approach is to use both layers: offload what can be decided without application context to the platform, and keep context-aware resiliency in the application code. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [3 Resilience Patterns That Keep a Backend Service Up When Its Dependencies Aren't](https://daily.dev/posts/3-resilience-patterns-that-keep-a-backend-service-up-when-its-dependencies-aren-t-by1axueza) · The T-Shaped Dev · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Timeouts and Deadlines in Distributed Systems](https://daily.dev/posts/timeouts-and-deadlines-in-distributed-systems-nhzdf0eiq) · gitconnected · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Designing self-healing microservices with recovery-aware redrive frameworks](https://daily.dev/posts/designing-self-healing-microservices-with-recovery-aware-redrive-frameworks-na7xkmxfy) · InfoWorld · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The closer to the edge, the more stable a platform must be](https://daily.dev/posts/the-closer-to-the-edge-the-more-stable-a-platform-must-be-1rptuv5sk) · ITNEXT · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Reliability is a Product Decision](https://daily.dev/posts/reliability-is-a-product-decision-wpmua7ypy) · Erlang Solutions · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#microservices](https://daily.dev/tags/microservices), [#distributed-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/distributed-systems), [#service-mesh](https://daily.dev/tags/service-mesh) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/should-retries-and-timeouts-live-in-your-application-or-your-service-mesh--imcs5sbvy) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Should retries and timeouts live in your application or your service mesh?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/should-retries-and-timeouts-live-in-your-application-or-your-service-mesh--imcs5sbvy","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/should-retries-and-timeouts-live-in-your-application-or-your-service-mesh--imcs5sbvy"},"datePublished":"2026-07-18T12:10:12.239Z","dateModified":"2026-07-18T12:10:33.897Z","description":"A concise take on where resiliency logic — retries, timeouts, circuit breakers — should live in a distributed system. 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