diff --git a/ci/github-script/bot.js b/ci/github-script/bot.js
index fb5e79e54239..fd5d4fa6df31 100644
--- a/ci/github-script/bot.js
+++ b/ci/github-script/bot.js
@@ -496,7 +496,11 @@ module.exports = async ({ github, context, core, dry }) => {
     }
   }
 
-  await withRateLimit({ github, core }, async (stats) => {
+  // Controls level of parallelism. Applies to both the number of concurrent requests
+  // as well as the number of concurrent workers going through the list of PRs.
+  const maxConcurrent = 20
+
+  await withRateLimit({ github, core, maxConcurrent }, async (stats) => {
     if (context.payload.pull_request) {
       await handle({ item: context.payload.pull_request, stats })
     } else {
@@ -625,11 +629,23 @@ module.exports = async ({ github, context, core, dry }) => {
             arr.findIndex((firstItem) => firstItem.number === thisItem.number),
         )
 
-      ;(await Promise.allSettled(items.map((item) => handle({ item, stats }))))
-        .filter(({ status }) => status === 'rejected')
-        .map(({ reason }) =>
-          core.setFailed(`${reason.message}\n${reason.cause.stack}`),
-        )
+      // Instead of handling all items in parallel we set up some workers to handle the queue
+      // with more controlled parallelism. This avoids problems with `pull_request` fetched at
+      // the beginning getting out of date towards the end, because it took the whole job 20
+      // minutes or more to go through 100's of PRs.
+      await Promise.all(
+        Array.from({ length: maxConcurrent }, async () => {
+          while (true) {
+            const item = items.pop()
+            if (!item) break
+            try {
+              await handle({ item, stats })
+            } catch (e) {
+              core.setFailed(`${e.message}\n${e.cause.stack}`)
+            }
+          }
+        }),
+      )
     }
   })
 }
diff --git a/ci/github-script/withRateLimit.js b/ci/github-script/withRateLimit.js
index efc63057beb7..d1b1c756ea09 100644
--- a/ci/github-script/withRateLimit.js
+++ b/ci/github-script/withRateLimit.js
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-module.exports = async ({ github, core }, callback) => {
+module.exports = async ({ github, core, maxConcurrent = 1 }, callback) => {
   const Bottleneck = require('bottleneck')
 
   const stats = {
@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ module.exports = async ({ github, core }, callback) => {
   //   https://docs.github.com/en/rest/using-the-rest-api/best-practices-for-using-the-rest-api
   const allLimits = new Bottleneck({
     // Avoid concurrent requests
-    maxConcurrent: 1,
+    maxConcurrent,
     // Will be updated with first `updateReservoir()` call below.
     reservoir: 0,
   })