# Pagination with Relative Cursors

DevFeed: [Pagination with Relative Cursors](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/pagination-with-relative-cursors-1516.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://shopify.engineering/pagination-relative-cursors>)

Author: Drew Martin

Published: 2019-08-12T17:30:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Shopify Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/shopify-engineering.md>), [Shopify Engineering - Shopify Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/shopify-engineering-shopify-engineering.md>)

Topics: [Shopify](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/shopify.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [SQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/sql.md>), [Server](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/server.md>)

Tags: [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [server](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/server.md>), [shopify](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/shopify.md>), [sql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sql.md>), [third-party-applications](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/third-party-applications.md>)

## AI overview

Shopify explains how relative cursor pagination avoids the increasingly slow database queries caused by large page-number offsets. The approach remembers the previous position and continues from there, improving performance when applications retrieve large product catalogs.

## Source excerpt

Using incremental page numbers for pagination scales poorly, so to solve this, Shopify uses relative cursor pagination to deliver faster queries.