Fast paging in the real world

LIMIT n OFFSET k walks and discards prior rows. Cost grows with page number.

Keyset

SELECT id, created_at, title
FROM posts
WHERE (created_at, id) < (?, ?)
ORDER BY created_at DESC, id DESC
LIMIT 20;

Pass the last tuple from the previous page. Index (created_at, id).

Trade-offs

• No cheap “jump to page 500” without extra design
• Ideal for next/prev and infinite scroll
• Stable under inserts if ordering keys are deterministic

Fix pagination before buying a larger server. OFFSET under traffic is a self-DDoS.