Case Study: Cutting TTFB by 60% and Doubling Scrape Throughput

Case Study: Cutting TTFB by 60% and Doubling Scrape Throughput

Hook: Real-world optimisation can dramatically improve scraper efficiency. This case study walks through a practical plan that reduced TTFB by 60% and doubled throughput without buying hardware.

Background

A mid-size data startup struggled with slow origin responses and rising cloud bills. Their goals were clear: reduce average page load time and increase successful extractions per hour.

Interventions

1. Introduced an edge snapshot cache to serve repeat requests.
2. Optimised DNS and reduced TLS handshake times using connection pooling.
3. Moved heavy transformations off the main path into asynchronous workers.

Measurement and Instrumentation

They measured:

• TTFB per domain
• Cache hit ratios
• Extraction success rate and cost per page

Case studies that quantify TTFB improvements help you model expected gains; a maker who published a detailed story on cutting TTFB and doubling conversions provides a helpful blueprint: Case Study: How One Maker Cut TTFB by 60% and Doubled Conversions.

CDN & Caching Choices

Choosing the right CDN and cache configuration mattered. They ran A/B tests on caching TTLs and purge strategies. For hosting large libraries of snapshots and backgrounds they benchmarked FastCacheX to validate throughput and cost: Review: FastCacheX CDN for Hosting High‑Resolution Background Libraries — 2026 Tests.

Operational Gains

• 60% reduction in average TTFB
• 2x scrape throughput using the same compute budget
• 30% reduction in repeat origin requests

Takeaways

Small changes compound:

• Edge caching delivers outsized returns for repeat queries.
• Architectural separation (sync vs async) prevents pipeline backpressure.
• Measure everything; use those metrics to tune purges and budgets.

“Optimisation is an engineering practice — instrument first, tweak second.”

Checklist for Teams

1. Record baseline TTFB across representative domains.
2. Introduce snapshot caching with incremental purging rules.
3. Move CPU-heavy transforms into worker queues.
4. Retest and iterate based on segment-level metrics.

Additional Reading

Borrowing techniques from the web performance and caching community is productive — operational reviews and CDN tests provide pragmatic patterns you can adapt quickly: Operational Review: Performance & Caching Patterns Startups Should Borrow from WordPress Labs (2026).

Conclusion: Measure TTFB and make caching a first-class citizen in your scraping stack. The payoff is faster extraction, lower cost, and more reliable deliveries to your consumers.