Why OFFSET Pagination Slows You Down: Switch to Keyset and Cut Latency from Seconds to Milliseconds
The article recounts how an API that originally used OFFSET pagination suffered 2‑3 seconds response time, and after rewriting the query to Keyset (Seek) pagination—adding a secondary sort key for stability and exploring cursor pagination, index‑only OFFSET, and materialized views—the same endpoint now responds in under 200 ms, with detailed benchmark comparisons.
