# Pulumi delete fails with 403 The provided update token has expired on large stacks
## The problem
Deleting a large Pulumi stack failed with post-step event returned an error: failed to save snapshot: [403] The provided update token has expired. The deletion left the stack with pending_operations that then had to be cleaned up manually. It happened on CI runners and locally, and reporters with big stacks hit it repeatedly. Maintainers traced it to the client machine being under heavy network load from Pulumi itself making many large network calls during the update.
## The verified fix
Fixed upstream in PR #17675 and shipped in Pulumi v3.138.0, which reduced the network load during updates. Upgrade the CLI to v3.138.0 or later. On older versions, doing patch-only updates (sending patches instead of full snapshots) lightens the traffic that triggers the expired-token 403.
Source: https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi/issues/7094