Estimating Twitter Queries Per Second and Storage - Example

The following numbers are just for demonstration. They are not related to the real numbers

Assumptions

• 300 million monthly active users (MAUs)
• 50% of users use Twitter daily.
• Users post 2 tweets per day on average.
• 10% of tweets contain media.
• Data is stored for 5 years.

Estimations / Calculations

Queries Per Second (QPS)

• Daily active users (DAU) = 300 million * 50% = 150 million
• Tweets QPS = 150 million * 2 tweets / 24 hour / 3600 seconds = ~3500

Peak QPS = 2 * QPS = ~7000 (Multiplying by two to have a buffer)

Media storage calculations

• Assumptions about the average tweet size
  • tweet_id - 64 bytes
  • text - 140 bytes
  • media - 1 MB
• Media storage - 150 million * 2 tweets * 10% * 1 MB = 30 TB per day

5-year media storage = 30 TB * 365 * 5 = ~55 PB

Related Notes

Sources

• (Done) Back of the envelop estimation by ByteByteGo - Highlights