Understanding the Offset and Cursor Pagination – Medium 5 Dec 2022 — Offset inefficiency — Doesn’t scale well with large datasetThe database looks up for (offset + limit) number of records before … Medium·Jason Ngan
A Developer’s Guide to API Pagination: Offset vs. Cursor-Based
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24 Sept 2017 — I even wanted to make my own DBMS when I was in university. Now I work both with RDBMS and NoSQL solutions, and I am very enthusia… allyouneedisbackend.com
Mastering SQL Pagination: LIMIT & OFFSET Ever … – Instagram
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20 Apr 2026 — Conclusion: Key Takeaways * Offset pagination degrades linearly with depth. At OFFSET 100,000 , the database scans and discards 10… System Design Nuggets·System Design Nuggets SQL OFFSET: Practical Guide – Medium
14 Nov 2024 — Get ryan’s stories in your inbox. Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer. Subscribe. Subscribe. Remember me for fast… Medium·ryan How to Use SQL OFFSET to Return Values Based on Position
28 Jun 2024 — How to Use SQL OFFSET. Master the SQL OFFSET clause. Discover how to use ORDER BY and LIMIT to return values based on position, wi…
SQL OFFSET pagination is a widely used approach for breaking large datasets into smaller, digestible chunks or “pages”. While highly intuitive and excellent for allowing users to jump randomly to specific page numbers, it introduces severe performance penalties as data grows because the database engine must scan and discard all skipped rows before returning a page. 🧱 Mechanics of Offset-Based Pagination
Offset-based pagination relies on two numbers: the page size (how many records to return) and the offset (how many records to skip from the start).
The application layer normally accepts a page number and uses a mathematical formula to calculate the exact offset required by the database:
OFFSET=(Page Number−1)×Page SizeOFFSET equals open paren Page Number minus 1 close paren cross Page Size Standard SQL Implementation
Different Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) employ slightly different syntaxes to achieve this: PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite (LIMIT & OFFSET):
SELECT id, name, price FROM products ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 10 OFFSET 20; – Fetches Page 3 (skips 20 rows, returns the next 10) Use code with caution. SQL Server (OFFSET & FETCH NEXT):
SELECT id, name, price FROM products ORDER BY id ASC OFFSET 20 ROWS FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY; Use code with caution.
⚠️ Pro Tip: Always pair OFFSET with an explicit ORDER BY clause. Relational databases do not guarantee default row ordering; without it, your pages may return scrambled, missing, or duplicate records across sequential requests. ⚠️ The Performance Bottleneck: Linear Degradation
The central illusion of OFFSET is the idea that the database jumps straight to the target slice. It does not.
If you execute a query with OFFSET 100000 LIMIT 10, the database engine will perform a full index or sequential scan to pull 100,010 records, read them, discard the first 100,000, and output only the remaining 10.
Shallow Pages (e.g., Page 1 to 5): Execution is near instantaneous (O(1) lookup time).
Deep Pages (e.g., Page 10,000+): Query time scales linearly (O(N)), consuming heavy CPU and memory bandwidth. Deep pagination requests can easily stall the database engine or trigger connection timeouts. 🔄 The “Data Drifting” Consistency Issue
Beyond latency problems, offset pagination is highly susceptible to phantom rows if data changes while a user interacts with the app.
The Insertion Problem: Suppose a user is looking at Page 1. If 5 new rows are inserted into the database by another process, the items at the bottom of Page 1 shift downward. When the user clicks “Next Page”, those exact same shifted items reappear at the top of Page 2.
The Deletion Problem: If 5 rows from Page 1 are deleted, the items from Page 2 slide up. When the user navigates to Page 2, they will skip past those records completely without ever seeing them. 🚀 Advanced Strategies for Large Datasets
To scale past the limits of OFFSET, master alternative data retrieval paradigms built around index seek operations instead of record scanning. 1. Keyset (Cursor-Based) Pagination
Instead of keeping track of an abstract page index, keyset pagination records a unique, indexed marker from the last item seen on the current page (such as a database ID or a timestamp). The next query simply uses a WHERE clause to filter out older rows. SQL Example:
– Fetching the next page based on the last seen item ID (e.g., ID 20123) SELECT id, name, price FROM products WHERE id > 20123 ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 20; Use code with caution.
Why it wins: The database executes a lightning-fast B-Tree index seek to locate id = 20123 instantly, fetching only the required 20 rows regardless of whether you are on page 2 or page 2,000. It also completely avoids the data drifting issue.
Trade-off: You cannot jump arbitrarily to a random, distant page number; users can only navigate sequentially (“Next” or “Previous”). This makes it perfect for infinite-scrolling feeds. 2. Deferred Joins
If your UI absolutely dictates random-access page navigation via OFFSET, you can optimize performance using a deferred join. This architecture separates column hydration from row skipping by using a lean subquery that skips rows using only the indexed primary key:
SELECT p.id, p.name, p.description, p.heavy_text_blob FROM products p JOIN ( SELECT id FROM products ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 10 OFFSET 100000 ) AS page ON p.id = page.id; Use code with caution.
By performing the heavy OFFSET skip inside the primary key index subquery, the engine avoids fetching large chunks of data (like heavy text blobs or multiple columns) into memory until after the records have been discarded.
If you’d like to tailor this to your backend system, tell me:
What database engine are you using (e.g., PostgreSQL, SQL Server)? What is the estimated size of your largest tables?
Does your frontend UI require numbered pagination buttons or infinite scroll?
I can provide the exact query optimization or code framework for your system. Understanding the Offset and Cursor Pagination – Medium
5 Dec 2022 — Offset inefficiency — Doesn’t scale well with large dataset * The database looks up for (offset + limit) number of records before … Medium·Jason Ngan
A Developer’s Guide to API Pagination: Offset vs. Cursor-Based
21 Nov 2025 — Cursor-Based API Pagination: Which Method to Choose. API pagination controls how much data flows between a client and a server in … Gusto Embedded Payroll
A Developer’s Guide to API Pagination: Offset vs. Cursor-Based
21 Nov 2025 — Learn how to efficiently fetch large data sets with API pagination. This guide compares offset and cursor-based methods, showing h… Gusto Embedded Payroll SQL Pagination With Offset Might Be Making Your App …
16 Mar 2026 — page of products. and this clause is how a lot of people learn how to page through items. and it’s not bad in isolation. however i… YouTube·Supabase Using LIMIT and OFFSET for Pagination
28 Jun 2025 — now in this example we are going to combine the limit and offset. this is useful for pagingation. in this query. we are getting th… YouTube·Knowledge 360
The SQL I Love <3. Efficient pagination of a table with 100M ...
24 Sept 2017 — I even wanted to make my own DBMS when I was in university. Now I work both with RDBMS and NoSQL solutions, and I am very enthusia… allyouneedisbackend.com
API Pagination Guide: Cursor vs Offset vs Keyset for High-Scale …
20 Apr 2026 — Conclusion: Key Takeaways * Offset pagination degrades linearly with depth. At OFFSET 100,000 , the database scans and discards 10… System Design Nuggets·System Design Nuggets
Mastering SQL Pagination: LIMIT & OFFSET Ever … – Instagram
15 Jan 2026 — Mastering SQL Pagination: LIMIT & OFFSET 📊 Ever wonder how your favorite apps load just a few posts at a time instead of crashing… Instagram·shecodesdata
Mastering SQL Pagination: LIMIT & OFFSET Ever … – Instagram
15 Jan 2026 — Mastering SQL Pagination: LIMIT & OFFSET Ever wonder how your favorite apps load just a few posts at a time instead of crashing yo… Instagram·shecodesdata Complete Guide to Pagination – DEV Community
15 Feb 2026 — Why is Pagination Necessary? * Performance Optimization. Database Load: Fetching millions of records in one query can overwhelm th… DEV Community SQL OFFSET: Practical Guide – Medium
14 Nov 2024 — Get ryan’s stories in your inbox. Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer. Subscribe. Subscribe. Remember me for fast… Medium·ryan How to Use SQL OFFSET to Return Values Based on Position
28 Jun 2024 — How to Use SQL OFFSET. Master the SQL OFFSET clause. Discover how to use ORDER BY and LIMIT to return values based on position, wi… Handling API Pagination: Fetching Large Data Sets – API7.ai
19 Jun 2025 — API pagination is a fundamental technique for breaking down large data responses into smaller, manageable chunks or “pages.” Inste… SQL Server Paging: Which Method is Fastest? | by Rebooter.S
1 Apr 2025 — Introduced in SQL Server 2012, OFFSET-FETCH offers a concise and intuitive syntax for paging. By specifying an offset and the numb… Medium·Rebooter.S Offset Pagination Step by Step (with Sharding)
10 May 2026 — Step 1: the two numbers we always need. To grab a slice from a database, every ORM needs two things: take — how many rows to retur… DEV Community Offset Pagination Step by Step (with Sharding)
10 May 2026 — Pagination = serve big lists in small slices. Formula: skip = (page – 1) * size , take = size . Page numbers are 1-based (page 1 i… DEV Community
Pagination: From SQL Foundations to Frontend Techniques – Medium
21 Nov 2025 — Almost all backend pagination techniques fall under two broad categories: * Offset-Based Pagination. Uses offset , limit , or page… Medium·Rabeehcv Pagination in SQL – GeeksforGeeks
27 May 2025 — Here I assumed the last fetched employee ID and set it to 5. I wanted to achieve Cursor Pagination here, and for that, I used ‘WHE… GeeksforGeeks Pagination in SQL – GeeksforGeeks
27 May 2025 — Pagination is a necessary method in SQL for managing large datasets effectively. By using the ‘LIMIT’ and ‘OFFSET’ clauses, we can… GeeksforGeeks
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26 Oct 2024 — Exploring Pagination Techniques in Databases: Offset, Keyset, and Cursor Pagination * Offset Pagination. Offset pagination is a st… LinkedIn·Nurmyrat Atamedov Paginate Large Datasets | Sina Riyahi – LinkedIn
15 Apr 2025 — How to paginate large datasets for better performance. … Note: this is Offset Based Pagination. It’s useful when you need to acc… LinkedIn·Sina Riyahi How to Paginate Large Datasets with SQL – LinkedIn
17 Jun 2025 — … “next/prev” paging Use Indexed Pagination for deep or random page access Use Partitioning to optimize overall query performanc… www.linkedin.com
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