What is Throughput?

Throughput, explained

Throughput measures real output, while bandwidth measures theoretical capacity. A network link might have a bandwidth of 1 Gbps, but congestion, protocol overhead, packet loss, and distance may limit actual throughput to much less.

The concept applies well beyond networking. A database's throughput might be measured in transactions per second, a web server's in requests per second, and an AI inference service's in tokens generated per second. Throughput and latency are related but distinct: a system can handle a high volume of requests while each individual request still takes a noticeable time. Engineers improve throughput through parallel processing, batching, caching, load balancing, and removing bottlenecks identified through monitoring and observability.