How to Add a Delay of Less Than One Minute in Zapier

A practical field guide from Automation Ace.

How to Add a Delay of Less Than One Minute in Zapier

Zapier's Delay by Zapier built-in app includes a "Delay For" action that pauses a Zap run for a specified duration before continuing to the next step. The action's default time unit is minutes, which can give the impression that the shortest possible delay is one minute. It is not. The time unit field accepts "seconds" as an option, enabling delays as short as a few seconds. This is useful for rate limiting, pacing API calls, working around race conditions, and any situation where a brief but sub-minute pause is needed between steps.

Why You Might Need a Sub-Minute Delay

The most common scenarios where a delay shorter than one minute is needed:

• API rate limiting: An API limits requests to a certain number per minute. Adding a 10-second delay between sequential API calls in a loop keeps the Zap within rate limits without waiting a full minute per request
• Race condition avoidance: Two systems need time to sync after a write operation. A 15-30 second delay after creating a record gives the upstream system time to propagate the change before the next Zap step reads it
• Sequential SMS or email pacing: When sending multiple messages in sequence, a short delay between each prevents them from arriving in the wrong order or triggering spam filters
• Webhook acknowledgment timing: Some services need a brief pause after receiving a webhook before a follow-up API call to the same service will succeed

How to Configure Delay For with Seconds

1. In the Zap editor, add an action step and choose Delay by Zapier as the app.
2. Select Delay For as the action event.
3. In the Delay For field, enter the number of time units to wait (e.g., 30).
4. In the Unit of Time field — this is the key step — change the unit from Minutes to Seconds.
5. Save the step. The Zap will now pause for 30 seconds at this point before proceeding to the next step.

The Unit of Time dropdown accepts: Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, and Weeks. Any value from 1 second upward is valid. For a 15-second delay, enter 15 and select Seconds.

Delay For vs. Delay Until

Delay by Zapier offers two action events:

• Delay For: Pauses for a fixed duration from the moment the step runs — "wait 30 seconds, then continue"
• Delay Until: Pauses until a specific date and time — "continue at 9 AM on Friday"

For sub-minute pauses, Delay For is the correct action. Delay Until is for scheduling future execution and requires a specific datetime input.

How Delay Affects Task Counting

A Delay step counts as one task per Zap run, the same as any other action step. A Zap with a Delay step uses one additional task per run regardless of how long the delay is. For high-volume Zaps, factor in this task cost when evaluating whether a delay step is worth adding versus handling the pacing within a Code step (which counts as one task regardless of how many API calls it makes internally).

For sequential looping workflows where rate limiting is needed across iterations, a Code step that uses await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 15000)) between loop iterations may be more task-efficient than adding a Delay step — see sequential looping in Zapier for this pattern.

Minimum Reliable Delay

In practice, the Zapier execution environment introduces its own overhead between steps — network latency, step initialization, etc. Very short delays (1-5 seconds) may not produce a reliably precise pause because the step overhead itself takes time. For timing-sensitive workflows where precision matters to within a few seconds, test the actual elapsed time in your Zap's run history. For most practical use cases — rate limiting, race condition avoidance, pacing — a 10-30 second delay is both sufficient and reliable.

The seconds option in Delay For is one of Zapier's less-obvious features. The default display shows minutes, and many users never notice the unit dropdown, assuming 1 minute is the floor. Switching to seconds unlocks fine-grained pacing for API rate limiting and timing-sensitive workflows — no Code step required.

For a reference of all Delay by Zapier capabilities alongside other built-in tools, see the Zapier built-in tools guide. For sub-minute pacing inside a loop, see sequential looping in Zapier steps. For help designing a paced automation workflow, talk to Automation Ace.