Pagination

Introduction

Pagination in MongoDB has two flavors: offset (skip + limit, simple but slow) and cursor-based (using the last item's id/timestamp, fast at any depth). For real apps, always prefer cursor-based.

Syntax reference

// Cursor-based ('seek')
const next = await db.posts
  .find({ _id: { $lt: lastSeenId } })
  .sort({ _id: -1 })
  .limit(20)
  .toArray();

Real-world use

Instagram, Twitter, GitHub — all use cursor-based pagination for performance.

Best practices

• Cursor pagination for any feed-style UI.
• Avoid skip() for offsets larger than a few hundred.