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MONOPOLY — Scale Benchmarks & Estimation Formulas
When to Use
- Use this skill when the task matches this description: Reference document for monopoly scale-benchmarks.
Quick Estimation Formulas
User → RPS Conversion
Requests per second (avg) = DAU × avg_requests_per_user_per_day / 86400
Requests per second (peak) = avg_RPS × peak_multiplier
Peak multipliers by app type:
Social media: 5–10×
E-commerce: 3–5× (higher during sales)
News / media: 10–20× (breaking news spike)
B2B SaaS: 2–3× (business hours spike)
Gaming: 5–15× (event-driven)
Storage Estimation
Storage per day = persisted_writes_per_day × stored_bytes_per_write
Storage per year = storage_per_day × 365
With replication = storage_per_year × replication_factor (3× typical)
Cache affects origin request load, not durable storage: estimate cache storage separately
Common payload sizes:
Tweet / short text: 500B
Social post with text: 2KB
Profile data: 5KB
Image (compressed): 200KB–2MB
Video (per minute): 50MB (720p), 150MB (1080p)
API JSON response: 1–20KB
Bandwidth Estimation
Inbound bandwidth = avg_request_size × RPS
Outbound bandwidth = avg_response_size × RPS
Convert: 1 Gbps = 125 MB/s
10 Gbps = 1.25 GB/s
Establishing capacity limits
There are no universal per-product throughput, memory or sharding limits without a tested workload. Record exact version/topology, hardware, record sizes, indexes, durability/replication, query mix, concurrency and p95/p99 latency/error targets. Increase load against representative data until a measured saturation constraint appears, then test a change and failover headroom.
Managed services still have account, partition, regional and API quotas. SQS retention is configurable up to 14 days; throughput varies by queue type, region, batching and high-throughput settings. Do not label managed databases or queues unlimited. Kafka throughput depends on partitions, brokers, payload and durability; consumers in a group are limited by assigned partitions. In-memory caches are bounded by available memory, item/object overhead, eviction, network and workload.
Illustrative Capacity Scenarios
The following DAU/RPS/storage/server/cost ranges are unvalidated teaching assumptions, not benchmarks, quotes or required architectures. Recompute from requests per user, durable-write fraction, bytes/retention and dated regional pricing, including egress, support, backups and operations.
1K DAU
Avg RPS: ~1–5 RPS
Peak RPS: ~10–50 RPS
DB size/year: ~10–50GB
Infra needed: Single server, managed DB (RDS t3.medium), basic CDN
Monthly cost: $50–200
10K DAU
Avg RPS: ~10–50 RPS
Peak RPS: ~100–500 RPS
DB size/year: ~100–500GB
Infra needed: 2–4 app servers, RDS r5.large, Redis t3.medium, CDN
Monthly cost: $300–800
100K DAU
Avg RPS: ~100–500 RPS
Peak RPS: ~1K–5K RPS
DB size/year: ~1–5TB
Infra needed: ASG (5–10 app servers), RDS r5.xlarge + 2 replicas, Redis cluster, CDN, ALB
Monthly cost: $2K–8K
1M DAU
Avg RPS: ~1K–5K RPS
Peak RPS: ~10K–50K RPS
DB size/year: ~10–50TB
Infra needed: ASG (20–50 servers), DB sharding or Aurora, Redis cluster, Kafka, CDN, WAF
Monthly cost: $20K–80K
10M DAU
Avg RPS: ~10K–50K RPS
Peak RPS: ~100K–500K RPS
DB size/year: ~100–500TB
Infra needed: Multi-region, microservices, distributed DB (Cassandra/CockroachDB), full CDN, dedicated SRE
Monthly cost: $200K–2M+
Common SLO Targets
| Tier | Availability | Monthly Downtime Allowed |
|---|---|---|
| 99% | Basic | 7.3 hours/month |
| 99.9% (three nines) | Standard production | 43.8 minutes/month |
| 99.95% | Important services | 21.9 minutes/month |
| 99.99% (four nines) | Critical services | 4.38 minutes/month |
| 99.999% (five nines) | Telecom / payments | 26 seconds/month |
Possible reliability measures to evaluate against a defined SLI/window (not a guarantee or universal requirement): Multi-AZ deployment, automated failover, zero-downtime deploys, chaos engineering, 24/7 on-call.
Latency Budget Guidelines
User perceived latency targets:
< 100ms → Feels instant
100–300ms → Acceptable for most interactions
300ms–1s → Noticeable; optimize if possible
> 1s → Frustrating; unacceptable for critical paths
Network latency by distance (approximate):
Same datacenter: 0.5ms
Same region (AZ): 1–2ms
Cross-region US: 30–60ms
US to Europe: 80–120ms
US to Asia: 150–250ms
Database query targets:
Simple key-value: < 1ms (cache)
Simple DB query: < 5ms
Complex query: < 50ms
Reporting query: < 500ms (async if > 1s)
Limitations
- This is a reference document and may not cover all edge cases. Always verify architectures before production.
