Open Real-time Gaming Leaderboard →Open Instagram Feed →

Real-time Gaming Leaderboard vs Instagram Feed

Real-time Gaming Leaderboard

Redis sorted sets for O(log n) score updates and rank queries; MySQL holds durable points and profiles. Top-N, a player's own rank, and the players around them.

Components (5)

Player
Game Service
Leaderboard Service
Redis Sorted Set
MySQL

Headline numbers

Score-update QPS (avg)~580/sec
Peak update QPS~2,500/sec
Sorted-set memory~650 MB

Instagram Feed

Fan-out on write vs read, ranking, CDN.

Components (10)

Mobile Client
CDN
API Gateway
Feed Service
Post Service
Kafka
Fan-out Worker
Redis
Postgres
S3

Headline numbers

Posts / sec (avg)~3,000/sec
Feed read QPS~58,000/sec
Fan-out writes / sec~600,000/sec

Key differences

Only in Real-time Gaming Leaderboard

None.

In both

Client
Service
Cache
Database

Only in Instagram Feed

CDN
API Gateway
Kafka
S3

Flow shape

Real-time Gaming Leaderboard flows

Player scores a point4 steps
Fetch the top 103 steps
Fetch a player's own rank2 steps
Fetch players around me (±4)3 steps
⚠ Redis node is lost3 steps

Instagram Feed flows

Post a photo (fan-out on write)7 steps
Open feed (precomputed timeline)5 steps
⚠ Fan-out Worker is down7 steps
⚠ Timeline cache flushed (Redis restart)4 steps