.NET Architecture & System Design Interview Question #20

What is throughput?

Architecture Fundamentals, Scalability, Availability & Performance Junior Beginner

Quick Interview Answer

Throughput is the amount of work a system completes per unit of time, such as requests per second, messages per second, or transactions per minute.

Detailed Explanation

Throughput is the amount of work a system completes per unit of time, such as requests per second, messages per second, or transactions per minute.

Latency and throughput are related but different. A system may process many requests per second while some individual requests remain slow. Capacity planning should consider both metrics and the expected workload.

Code Example

Throughput examples:
2,000 requests/second
50,000 messages/minute

Latency example:
p95 = 180 ms