Pagination Strategies for Large Datasets and Why Offset Pagination Fails

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Offset pagination — the pattern where a consumer requests a page by specifying how many records to skip — is the default choice for most APIs because it maps naturally to SQL’s LIMIT and OFFSET clauses and allows consumers to request any page directly by number. It is also the pagination strategy that fails most visibly at scale and produces the most confusing behavior when underlying data changes between page requests.

Scalability on API Coding

Pagination Strategies for Large Datasets and Why Offset Pagination Fails