Gareth Wilson

How to Solve Bitbucket Webhook Timeout Errors

Published Jan 30, 2026

Bitbucket webhooks are essential for automating CI/CD pipelines, triggering builds, syncing repositories, and integrating with third-party services. However, if your webhook processing takes longer than 10 seconds, you'll encounter timeout errors that can disrupt your entire workflow.

In this guide, we'll explore why Bitbucket webhook timeouts occur, the consequences of failing to respond in time, and how to solve these issues using Hookdeck.

Understanding Bitbucket's webhook timeout behavior

When you configure a webhook in Bitbucket, the platform sends an HTTP POST request to your endpoint whenever a specified event occurs (such as a push, pull request, or merge). Your server must respond within the timeout window, or Bitbucket considers the request failed.

Bitbucket Cloud timeout behavior

Bitbucket Cloud enforces a 10-second timeout for webhook responses. If your server doesn't respond within this window:

The request times out and is marked as failed
Bitbucket automatically retries the webhook up to 2 additional times for 5xx errors
There's no configurable delay between retries
After all retries fail, the webhook event may be lost

Bitbucket Data Center/Server timeout behavior

Bitbucket Data Center (self-hosted) also defaults to a 10-second timeout, but includes additional protections:

The timeout can be configured via Bitbucket Server properties
A circuit breaker activates after 5 consecutive failures
Failed webhooks are initially skipped for 10 seconds, gradually increasing up to 10 hours
If 250 webhooks are in flight simultaneously, additional requests are skipped

Common causes of Bitbucket webhook timeouts

Synchronous processing

The most common cause of timeouts is processing webhook payloads synchronously, for example, running database operations, making external API calls, or executing business logic before responding.

Heavy CI/CD workloads

Bitbucket webhooks often trigger resource-intensive operations:

Starting Jenkins or GitHub Actions builds and waiting for initial response
Triggering static site generation with Jekyll, Hugo, or Next.js
Synchronizing repository data or updating deployment records
Notifying Slack, updating Jira, or triggering downstream services

Traffic spikes

During busy periods (such as release days, large pull request activity, or automated bulk operations) webhook volume can spike dramatically. If your endpoint can't handle the load, response times increase and timeouts occur.

Cold starts on serverless platforms

If you're running webhook handlers on serverless platforms (AWS Lambda, Vercel, Cloud Functions), cold starts can add several seconds to response times, eating into your 10-second budget.

Network latency

Geographic distance between Bitbucket's servers and your endpoint, or network congestion, can contribute to timeouts even when your code executes quickly.

The problem with traditional solutions

Building your own queue

You could implement a message queue (Hookdeck, RabbitMQ, Redis, SQS) to decouple webhook ingestion from processing.

While this works, it requires:

Setting up and maintaining queue infrastructure
Building retry logic
Implementing dead-letter queues for failed messages
Monitoring queue health and processing latency
Handling duplicate deliveries

How Hookdeck solves Bitbucket webhook timeouts

Hookdeck is webhook infrastructure that sits between Bitbucket and your endpoint, acting as a managed queue that eliminates timeout issues entirely.

How it works

Bitbucket sends webhook to Hookdeck: Hookdeck acknowledges receipt in under 200ms (well within Bitbucket's timeout window)
Hookdeck queues the event: The webhook is stored reliably until your server is ready
Your server processes at its own pace: Hookdeck delivers events with a 60-second timeout window, giving you 6x more time
Automatic retries: If your server is temporarily unavailable, Hookdeck retries with configurable backoff

Setting up Hookdeck with Bitbucket

Step 1: Create a Hookdeck connection

Create a Hookdeck connection

Source: Create a new source named bitbucket
Destination: Enter your actual webhook endpoint URL

Hookdeck provides you with a unique URL like:

https://hkdk.events/xxxxxxxxxx

Step 2: Configure Bitbucket webhook

Create Bitbucket webhook

In your Bitbucket repository:

Navigate to Repository settings > Webhooks
Click Add webhook
Enter a title for your webhook
Enter the Hookdeck URL as the webhook URL
Select the events you want to receive (Repository push, Pull request events, etc.)
Click Save

Step 3: Configure your destination

In Hookdeck, configure your destination settings:

// Destination configuration
{
  "url": "https://your-server.com/api/webhooks/bitbucket",
  "rate_limit": {
    "limit": 10,
    "period": "second"
  },
  "retry": {
    "strategy": "exponential",
    "count": 5,
    "interval": 30000
  }
}

Key benefits for Bitbucket webhooks

Never miss a webhook

Hookdeck acknowledges Bitbucket webhooks instantly, so they're never marked as failed due to timeout. Even if your server goes down, webhooks are queued and delivered when it's back online.

Rate limiting

Control how fast webhooks are delivered to your server. This is crucial during:

Large pull request activity
Automated testing that generates many pipeline events
Bulk repository operations

Automatic retries

Configure retry behavior to match your infrastructure.

Event filtering

Process only the webhooks you need. Reduce load by filtering events at the Hookdeck layer.

Visibility and debugging

Hookdeck provides a dashboard showing:

All webhook deliveries with full request/response data
Failed deliveries and retry history
Latency metrics
Filtering effectiveness

This visibility is invaluable when debugging CI/CD pipeline issues.

Updating your webhook handler

With Hookdeck in place, your webhook handler can focus on business logic without timeout anxiety.

Conclusion

Bitbucket's 10-second webhook timeout is a common source of CI/CD pipeline reliability issues. While you can work around it by building your own queue infrastructure, Hookdeck provides a turnkey solution. By using Hookdeck, you can focus on building your CI/CD workflows instead of managing webhook infrastructure.

Additional resources