How to Implement Retry with Exponential Backoff in Go

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2026-04-17T12:05:42+00:00
Implement retry with exponential backoff in Go using a loop that doubles the wait time and adds jitter on each failure.

Implement retry with exponential backoff in Go by looping until success or max attempts, doubling the wait time on each failure.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"math/rand"
	"time"
)

func RetryWithBackoff(maxAttempts int, fn func() error) error {
	baseDelay := 100 * time.Millisecond
	maxDelay := 10 * time.Second

	for i := 0; i < maxAttempts; i++ {
		if err := fn(); err == nil {
			return nil
		}

		if i == maxAttempts-1 {
			return err
		}

		// Exponential backoff: 2^i * baseDelay
		backoff := time.Duration(1<<uint(i)) * baseDelay
		if backoff > maxDelay {
			backoff = maxDelay
		}

		// Add jitter (±10%)
		jitter := time.Duration((0.1*rand.Float64()-0.05) * float64(backoff))
		time.Sleep(backoff + jitter)
	}
	return fmt.Errorf("max retries exceeded")
}