Request payload size

GraphQL requests can become large due to repeated fragments or deeply nested selections, increasing network transfer and server parsing costs.

Symptoms

• Requests with very large payloads
• High bandwidth usage for small responses
• Slow parsing and validation

Why it matters

Large payloads are expensive to transmit and parse, and amplify traffic spikes or malicious inputs.

Practices that address this

• Trusted documents
• Pagination limits

Patterns that address this

• Trusted documents (operation allowlist)
• Validation pagination limits
• Resolver pagination limits