API Pagination Complete Guide — Offset, Cursor, and Keyset Strategies

In this tutorial, you will learn about API Pagination Complete Guide. We cover key concepts, practical examples, and best practices to help you master this topic.

API pagination divides large result sets into smaller pages using strategies like offset-limit, cursor-based, keyset pagination, and link headers for navigation.

What You'll Learn

• Offset-limit vs cursor vs keyset pagination
• When to use each Strategy
• Pagination metadata, sorting, and filtering
• Graphql Relay connections

Why Pagination Matters

Without pagination, APIs return all data at once, overwhelming clients and servers. Proper pagination scales to millions of records.

flowchart TD
    A["Pagination\nStrategies"] --> B["Offset-Limit\npage=1&limit=20"]
    A --> C["Cursor-Based\ncursor=abc123"]
    A --> D["Keyset Pagination\nWHERE id > 100"]
    B --> E["Simple, common\nbut inconsistent"]
    C --> F["Stable results\nreal-time friendly"]
    D --> G["Best performance\nfor large datasets"]
    style A fill:#dbeafe,stroke:#2563eb

What's Next

Start with Pagination Introduction or compare Offset vs Cursor pagination.