Database Pagination at Scale: Cursor-Based Indexing vs Offset Queries

Short summary

Offset-based SQL pagination performs O(N) scans to retrieve deep pages, degrading performance on massive datasets and causing duplicate/missing records in dynamic feeds. Cursor-based pagination uses indexed lookups achieving O(log N) performance while maintaining consistency. Trade-off: cursor pagination only supports sequential next/previous navigation, not arbitrary page jumps.

• •OFFSET pagination scans all preceding rows, causing O(N) performance degradation with dataset size
• •Cursor-based pagination uses indexed lookups (O(log N)), providing consistent performance regardless of depth
• •Practical constraint: cursor pagination only supports sequential navigation, not direct page number jumping

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