From 2,500 requests to 24: Rebuilding star history without the stargazers

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From 2,500 requests to 24: Rebuilding star history without the stargazers

Data backenddatabase GitHub

GitHub optimized its star history API by server-side filtering, reducing request volume by over 99%.

What: GitHub introduced a daily star count API that pre-filters data by date, eliminating the need for clients to process and count individual stargazer events.

Why it matters: Moving heavy aggregation logic from the client to the database layer significantly reduces API surface area and bandwidth usage for large-scale repositories.

Original article

GitHub built a star history API that returns daily counts without exposing users' identities, cutting React's full history from about 2,500 requests to 24. It reduces database work by filtering stars by date before counting them, rather than repeatedly processing every star.

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