Is this a video course?

No. This is an interactive, slide-based learning platform. Each lesson has rich text, animated diagrams, live code editors, and quizzes. You learn by reading, interacting, and doing, not by watching videos passively.

How long do I have access?

Forever. Both pricing tiers are one-time payments with lifetime access. This includes all current 766 lessons and any future content we add.

What level of experience do I need?

None. We start from absolute basics like 'What is latency?' and build up to distributed consensus protocols. The Foundation level assumes zero prior knowledge of system design.

How much does the system design course cost?

7.99 US dollars for lifetime access globally, or 499 Indian rupees for lifetime access in India. One-time payment, no subscription, no hidden fees. 11 lessons are free with no signup required.

What technologies are covered?

Everything from DNS and load balancers to Kubernetes, Kafka, distributed databases, consensus protocols, stream processing, security architecture, and observability. We cover principles and real-world implementations used at Netflix, Google, Amazon, Uber, Stripe, and more.

Is this useful for system design interview preparation?

Yes. The lessons are structured around the exact topics asked in system design interviews at FAANG and top-tier companies. Interactive diagrams help you practice whiteboard-style explanations. Covers everything from URL shortener design to distributed payment systems.

How is this different from ByteByteGo or Educative?

766 interactive lessons (4x more than most competitors), 16 different diagram types that build step by step, real production examples from Netflix, Google, Amazon, Uber, and Stripe, and lifetime access for a one-time payment of $7.99 instead of annual subscriptions costing 100 to 200 dollars per year.

A downstream is returning 50% errors. Every caller retries each failure 3 times. What happens to the actual load on the downstream?

Load roughly triples, pushing the downstream from 50% errors to near 100%, Retry amplification. Each failing request generates up to 3 retries. At 50% error rate, half your traffic retries 3x. Total load jumps from 1x to roughly 2.5-3x. The downstream, already at capacity, collapses under the amplified load. This is exactly what LinkedIn documented in 2019.

AWS measured three jitter strategies: full jitter, equal jitter, and decorrelated jitter. Which performed best in their 2015 study?

Full jitter: random between 0 and the full backoff value, AWS measured full jitter as the best strategy for minimizing both total completion time and contention on the downstream. Full jitter spreads retries most evenly across the window, preventing synchronized retry waves.

Why is retrying a 429 Too Many Requests without backoff dangerous?

The server has explicitly told you to slow down, and retrying immediately makes the rate limiting worse, A 429 means the server's rate limiter rejected your request. Retrying immediately adds more requests to an already-full rate limiting window. You should respect the Retry-After header and back off. Many services will escalate to 403 or block your IP if you ignore rate limiting.

Stripe uses idempotency keys on payment API calls. What problem does this solve for retries?

It prevents double-charging when a successful payment request is retried due to a network error hiding the success response, The classic problem: you send 'charge $50', the charge succeeds, but the response is lost to a network error. You retry with the same idempotency key. Stripe recognizes the key, returns the original result, and does not charge again. Without this, the customer pays $100.

Retry Patterns

Name: System Design Masterclass
Availability: InStock

in Reliability Resilience

This lesson is part of the full System Design Masterclass. Unlock it along with 765 other lessons for a one-time payment.

One-time payment. Lifetime access. No subscription.

Global

$19.99$7.99/lifetime

One-time payment via PayPal

Get Lifetime Access

Foundation lessons free, try before you buy

Founders price, locked for the first 10,000 customers

India Special

India

₹999₹499/lifetime

One-time via UPI, cards, or net banking

Get Lifetime Access

Foundation lessons free, try before you buy

Founders price, locked for the first 10,000 customers

“The interactive diagrams alone are worth way more than the price.”

Anish K., Senior Engineer at a Bengaluru startup

All 766 interactive lessons

Step-by-step animated diagrams

Live code editors with real execution

Quizzes with instant feedback

Completion certificates per level

Lifetime access, all future content included

The first 5 Foundation lessons are free, no payment needed. Try them now