API Design · Junior · Question 28 of 75

What's the difference between offset and cursor pagination?

✓Correct answer: Offset uses ?page=3&limit=20 and can skip or repeat items when data changes; cursor pagination uses an opaque token pointing to the last item seen
2Cursor pagination works only with GraphQL
3There is no difference

Explanation

Cursors are stable and fast on large tables but don't allow jumping to page N. Offsets are simple and fine for small, slow-changing data.

Further reading

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