Cookbook recipe

Keyset pagination instead of OFFSET

Applies to PostgreSQL 13–17 Last reviewed May 2026 Grounded in source

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Estimated investigation4 min

Scenario

Page 5000 of an OFFSET-paginated list is painfully slow because the database still scans and discards every skipped row. Keyset pagination is O(1) per page. Diagnose it Replace OFFSET with a WHERE on the last seen…

Investigation Path

Page 5000 of an OFFSET-paginated list is painfully slow because the database still scans and discards every skipped row. Keyset pagination is O(1) per page.

Diagnose it

Replace OFFSET with a WHERE on the last seen key:

-- slow: OFFSET 100000 LIMIT 20
-- fast keyset:
SELECT * FROM posts
WHERE (created_at, id) < ('2026-01-01', 9999)
ORDER BY created_at DESC, id DESC
LIMIT 20;

Why it happens

OFFSET N must still read and throw away N rows before returning results, so cost grows with page depth. Keyset uses an index range starting just past the last row you saw.

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