Token pagination - not everything is an offset

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 15:38:00 -0300

Why API pagination is important Link to heading

API pagination is one of those tricky details that contributes a lot to the performance of a website. I use it frequently as an acurate indicator of an interview candidate. The ones who, when defining the API contract, mention API pagination tend to be the ones who perform better later on.

Most of the internet is CRUD-based, i.e. the majority of websites are just plain forms with a Create, Read, Update or Delete. Of course, there are more nuanced business rules here and there (and I don’t want to sound like a project manager trying to negotiate a deadline); however, if we take most of the edge cases and exception scenarios out, we end up with a CRUD flow. As a consequence, a great performance impact comes from how well the four operations are handled, especially the READ operation which could be a simple index hit or a full table scan.

Database on Leonardo Zamariola

Token pagination - not everything is an offset

Why API pagination is important Link to heading