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Photo sharing app

Instagram-style feed: media CDN, autoscaled API, Redis feed cache, social-graph DB, search, and async image processing.

Cache offload, read fan-out, and an async upload pipeline at 30k RPS.

• Throughput: 30,000 req/sec
• First to saturate: Auth
• Estimated cost: $196k/mo

How it works

Feed Cache

Absorbs ~92% of feed reads, so the social graph DB only ever sees the misses.

Upload Queue

Uploads return instantly; the heavy image work runs off this queue, clear of the response path.

Request flows

View feed

1. DNS
2. WAF
3. Load Balancer
4. Feed API
5. Auth
6. Feed Cache
7. Social Graph DB

Search photos

1. DNS
2. WAF
3. Load Balancer
4. Feed API
5. Search
6. Media Index

Upload photo

1. DNS
2. WAF
3. Load Balancer
4. Feed API
5. Upload Queue
6. Image Processor
7. Thumbnails
8. Media Index

Other reference architectures

• 3-tier web app
• Ride-hailing app
• Video streaming
• E-commerce checkout
• Serverless data pipeline
• URL shortener
• Indie SaaS on Vercel
• Mobile app on Firebase + AWS
• Community app on Supabase
• Modern data stack
• Open-banking API backend
• VFX render farm

Open this architecture in SysPad · All examples