This study analyses the delay‐limited throughput performance of an uplink cellular relay network utilising hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) protocol in which one mobile station (MS) communicates with one base station (BS) with the aid of one amplify‐and‐forward relay station (RS). The authors’ analysis allows for a practical fading scenario where MS → RS and RS → BS channels undergo independent Rayleigh and Rician fading, respectively. Delay‐limited throughput expressions for two HARQ protocols are derived, respectively, namely Repetition Time Diversity and Incremental Redundancy. Furthermore, the impact of different parameters on the achievable throughput, such as the maximum HARQ round number L , line‐of‐sight signal K , information rate R etc., is analysed. The authors’ analysis unveils that, for the presumed dual‐hop cooperation model with the specified tolerable delay requirement and given channel condition, there exists an optimal information rate R * that achieves the maximum delay‐limited throughput for the two HARQ protocols. Moreover, it is disclosed that, both HARQ protocols with the adaptive optimised information rate outperform the counterpart with the fixed information rate in low and moderate SNR regions, suggesting that an adaptive transmission scheme should be employed to achieve a better throughput performance.