Case Studies System Designs
Worked Case Studies system design walkthroughs: the requirements, the trade-offs, real numbers and the component choices behind each design.
Tinder: Matching and Geo-Based Recommendations
End-to-end design of a swipe-based dating app covering geo-indexed candidate discovery, real-time match detection, and a scalable recommendation pipeline.
Case Studies · intermediate · 12 min read
Top-K Heavy Hitters: Most-Requested Items in a Time Window
Design a scalable system that tracks the K most-frequently requested items (URLs, products, queries) over a sliding or tumbling time window with sub-second read latency.
Case Studies · advanced · 12 min read
Twitter Search and Trending Topics
Design a real-time full-text search engine and trending-topic pipeline capable of indexing 500M+ tweets/day and serving sub-200ms search queries at global scale.
Case Studies · advanced · 12 min read
Uber Ride Matching and Dispatch System
End-to-end design of Uber's real-time ride matching, location tracking, and dispatch pipeline handling millions of concurrent riders and drivers worldwide.
Case Studies · advanced · 12 min read
Unified Payments Interface (UPI) System Design
End-to-end architecture of India's real-time payment backbone: how 300M+ daily transactions are routed, settled, and made fault-tolerant across banks and PSPs.
Case Studies · advanced · 12 min read
URL Shortener (Bitly / TinyURL)
Design a scalable URL shortening service that encodes long URLs into short aliases and redirects users at low latency, handling billions of redirects per day.
Case Studies · beginner · 12 min read
Vending Machine System Design
Design a reliable, concurrent vending machine system covering inventory management, payment processing, dispensing logic, and remote monitoring at scale.
Case Studies · beginner · 12 min read
YouTube / Netflix Video Streaming Platform
End-to-end design of a global video streaming platform handling upload, transcoding, adaptive delivery, and 1B+ daily views with sub-second start times.
Case Studies · advanced · 12 min read
Zoom: Video Conferencing at Scale
Deep dive into the architecture behind a real-time video conferencing platform handling millions of concurrent meetings, covering media routing, signaling, and global distribution.
Case Studies · advanced · 12 min read