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Open Airbnb (Marketplace) →Open URL Shortener →

Airbnb (Marketplace) vs URL Shortener

Airbnb (Marketplace)

Airbnb (Marketplace)

Geo-search, booking, payments, and reviews. The canonical two-sided marketplace architecture.

Components (10)

  • Guest / Host
  • API Gateway
  • Search Service
  • Listing Service
  • Booking Service
  • Payments Service
  • Messaging Service
  • Kafka
  • Postgres
  • S3 + CDN

Headline numbers

  • Search QPS~5,800/sec avg, ~30K peak
  • Booking QPS~60/sec avg, ~300 peak
  • Photo storage~5 PB
URL Shortener

URL Shortener

Hashing, key generation, read-heavy caching.

Components (6)

  • Client
  • API Gateway
  • Write Service
  • Read Service
  • Redis
  • Postgres

Headline numbers

  • Write QPS (avg)~1,200/sec
  • Read QPS (avg)~120,000/sec
  • Storage per year~5 TB

Key differences

Only in Airbnb (Marketplace)
  • Search Service
  • Kafka
  • S3 + CDN
In both
  • Client
  • Api Gateway
  • Service
  • Database
Only in URL Shortener
  • Redis

Flow shape

Airbnb (Marketplace) flows
  • Search + book a listing8 steps
  • Two guests try to book the same dates simultaneously5 steps
  • ⚠ Brand-new listing not yet searchable5 steps
URL Shortener flows
  • Shorten a URL3 steps
  • Resolve short URL (cache hit)3 steps
  • Resolve short URL (cache miss)4 steps
  • ⚠ Redis is down4 steps