API pagination is the process of dividing a large set of data returned by an API into smaller, more manageable “pages” (chunks), rather than returning the entire dataset in a single response.
Why API pagination
Imaging you are hosting an event ticketing website, if you have a database with 10,000 events, and users would like to list the events. Returning them all at once:
- Slows down backend and frontend
- Waste bandwidth
- Overwhelms the client with large among of data
Pagination allows clients to request only a portion of the data at a time, e.g., “Give me page 2 of 20 events per page.”