pywikibots automatic throttle should have changed with the botflag which should make it a bit quicker. There is also the possibility of decreasing the throttle a bit more.

The main issue though is that each change is a separate edit. This is largely due to limitations in pywikibot.

Even now that the account has a botflag, it still took over a minute to upload an "item" with 5 claims and 2 labels to the Sandbox... Got a "sleeping for 8 seconds" after every operation.

Will do some testing with:

maxlag = 0
maxthrottle = 10
minthrottle = 0
put_throttle = 5

Tested with

maxthrottle = 5
minthrottle = 0
put_throttle = 2

It took 42 seconds to upload an item with 11 claims and 8 references. The ships are particularly claim-rich though -- most other datasets contain simpler items, which will take less time.

In T159798#3084378, @Alicia_Fagerving_WMSE wrote:

Tested with

maxthrottle = 5
minthrottle = 0
put_throttle = 2

It took 42 seconds to upload an item with 11 claims and 8 references. The ships are particularly claim-rich though -- most other datasets contain simpler items, which will take less time.

Which maxlag value did you use in that test?

In T159798#3087019, @Lokal_Profil wrote:

Which maxlag value did you use in that test?

It was 0.

In T159798#3087034, @Alicia_Fagerving_WMSE wrote:

In T159798#3087019, @Lokal_Profil wrote:

Which maxlag value did you use in that test?

It was 0.

I'd try bumping that to 5 which I believe is standard value but shouldn't make it slower