Shopify Replaces Redis with MySQL for Black Friday Inventory
Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify successfully migrated its checkout inventory reservation system from Redis to MySQL for Black Friday 2025 traffic. The platform, which handled a record $5.1 million in sales per minute during peak volume, adopted MySQL 8's row-level locking feature to manage high-throughput concurrency, proving relational databases can scale for high-demand retail events.
Key points
- Shopify, a major Canadian multinational e-commerce company, migrated its core inventory reservation system from Redis to MySQL.
- The platform handled record-breaking traffic during Black Friday 2025, reaching $5.1 million in sales per minute at peak performance.
- Engineers utilized MySQL 8's 'SKIP LOCKED' feature, shifting from a single-row design to one row per inventory unit to prevent overselling.
- The successful transition aligns with a broader company strategy to unify database infrastructure while maintaining high-throughput checkout reliability.
Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify has successfully transitioned its critical checkout inventory reservation system from Redis to MySQL, culminating in a robust performance during the Black Friday 2025 shopping event. Maintaining accurate inventory during peak sales is vital for merchants, as overselling leads to order cancellations and underselling results in lost revenue. During peak moments on Black Friday 2025, merchants on the platform generated a record $5.1 million in sales per minute, with every single transaction relying on this inventory protection mechanism.
For years, Shopify relied on Redis to manage short-term inventory holds during payment processing. As part of a broader corporate move toward a unified database strategy, engineering teams evaluated whether MySQL could withstand equivalent operational loads. Previous architectural attempts had struggled because a single database row tracking a total quantity created severe contention bottlenecks under heavy concurrent traffic.
Inspired by similar database-backed load distribution methods used by 37signals, Shopify redesigned its architecture around MySQL 8. By leveraging the database's 'SKIP LOCKED' feature, the system shifted from tracking aggregate item quantities to managing individual rows for each inventory unit. This structural change allowed the relational database to match the necessary high-throughput targets during peak holiday traffic, validating the scalability of MySQL for massive e-commerce operations.
Sources
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