Sandbox SearchOrders broken for 40+ hours: nothing created or updated since 2026-09-23 is returned

Questions
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1

Environment: Sandbox · Orders API (POST /v2/orders/search) · Webhooks (order.created / order.updated)

Summary

Since 2026-09-23 12:21:01 UTC, sandbox SearchOrders has not returned any order created or updated after that time. It is still happening as of 2026-09-25 02:40 UTC (about 38 hours).

  • CreateOrder and UpdateOrder return 200.
  • RetrieveOrder / BatchRetrieveOrders return current data.
  • SearchOrders never returns new orders, and returns stale versions of older ones.
  • Real order webhooks have stopped, while subscription test events still arrive (details below).

It affects two unrelated sandbox test accounts, accessed through different applications:

Merchant Location Example order created after the freeze (RetrieveOrder returns it; search doesn’t)
ML1RP9J4***** LPJ785WH***** LZE08OeWEfZEHbOoDP2Hgcy***** (created 2026-09-25T02:08:26Z)
MLB10NJM***** LSTZ2M93***** 53F2w7CEjJ4J8aHJAL7duDfc***** (created 2026-09-24T12:15:43Z)

Reproduction

1. Search for orders created since the freeze returns nothing:

curl https://connect.squareupsandbox.com/v2/orders/search \
  -X POST \
  -H 'Square-Version: 2026-01-22' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <SANDBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "location_ids": ["LPJ785WH*****"],
    "limit": 100,
    "query": {
      "filter": {
        "date_time_filter": { "created_at": { "start_at": "2026-09-23T12:21:02Z" } },
        "state_filter": { "states": ["OPEN", "COMPLETED", "CANCELED", "DRAFT"] }
      },
      "sort": { "sort_field": "CREATED_AT", "sort_order": "DESC" }
    }
  }'

Response: {}. Dozens of orders have been created at this location since then, including another 10–20 today. The same query against LSTZ2M93***** also returns {}.

2. Updates aren’t indexed either. Without the date filter, the newest order search returns is vpzEMUMUii7V3HU9EvM4mFN*****:

Source state version updated_at
SearchOrders OPEN 1 2026-09-23T12:21:01Z
RetrieveOrder (same token) CANCELED 2 2026-09-24T00:37:16Z

Webhooks: test events arrive, real order events don’t

Run on 2026-09-25 against our subscription for the first merchant (API version 2026-01-22, subscribed to order.created, order.updated, payment.*):

Time (UTC) Action Webhook received? In SearchOrders?
02:08:05 Subscription test event (order.created) :white_check_mark: 202, recorded 9 s later n/a
02:08:26 Real CreateOrder (PICKUP) :cross_mark: nothing after 4+ minutes :cross_mark: not after 2 minutes of polling
02:11:04 Real UpdateOrder: cancelled the same order (v2) :cross_mark: nothing :cross_mark: not by updated_at either

RetrieveOrder returned the order correctly at every step. So our endpoint is fine, and Square isn’t emitting events for real order activity. Earlier, 92 cancellations at 2026-09-24 00:37 UTC also produced no order.updated events.

What we’ve ruled out

  • API version: the same with Square-Version 2025-05-15, 2025-05-21, 2026-01-22 and 2026-05-20.
  • Credentials: the same with several access tokens from different applications, including personal access tokens and an OAuth token with ORDERS_READ. Every search returns 200 (no 401/403), and the same token gets current data from RetrieveOrder.
  • Query shape: the same with no filter, all states, and sorting by CREATED_AT or UPDATED_AT.
  • GraphQL: the sandbox orders query filtered by date returns the same frozen, stale data. Filtering by id returns current data.
  • Other endpoints: ListPayments and Catalog search are current.

Impact

This has blocked our integration testing for almost two days. It’s the second multi-day sandbox Orders search outage in five months (see this thread, 30 April – 5 May 2026), and again there’s nothing on the status page.

The failure mode makes it worse. Every search returns 200 with results that look normal: stale versions of older orders, and an empty result for anything new. Nothing signals that the index has stopped updating. We spent time ruling out our own code, tokens, API versions, query shapes and even GraphQL before we could be confident the problem was on Square’s side. A clear error or a status notice would have saved most of that time, for us and, if this is sandbox-wide as it appears, for every other developer testing against the sandbox right now.

Questions

  1. Can you confirm this and have the sandbox Orders search index and order event delivery looked at?
  2. Once it’s fixed, will orders created or updated during the outage be indexed with their original created_at / updated_at, and will the missed webhooks be delivered? Our integration searches a recent updated_at window, so we need to know whether to run our own backfill.
  3. Can sandbox Orders search and webhook problems be posted on the status page in future, and is there an ETA for this one?

IDs above are partially masked. Happy to share the full merchant, location, order and application IDs privately.

3

We are investigating several issues with sandbox at the moment and don’t yet have an update but thank you for all of this detailed information! Very helpful as we sort things out.