Strangler Fig Pattern
A migration strategy where you gradually replace a monolith by routing features one by one to new microservices, until the old system can be decommissioned.
What is Strangler Fig Pattern?
A migration strategy where you gradually replace a monolith by routing features one by one to new microservices, until the old system can be decommissioned.
Strangler Fig Pattern is a intermediate-level concept that sits in the Microservices Architecture area of system design. Engineers reach for it whenever they need to reason about real-world trade-offs in that space — not just for textbook correctness, but because real production systems at companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Google make these decisions every day.
If you want to go deeper than this definition — with diagrams, code, and a quiz to lock it in — work through the "Strangler Fig Pattern" lesson linked below. It walks through the why, the mechanism, the trade-offs, and how the giants actually use it in production.
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See also
Related glossary terms you might want to look up next.
Monolith
A single, unified application where all features share the same codebase and deployment. Simpler to start with but harder to scale individual parts.
Microservices
An architecture where an application is split into small, independent services that communicate over the network. Each service owns its own data and can be deployed separately.
API Gateway
A single entry point for all client requests that routes them to the appropriate microservice. Handles auth, rate limiting, and request transformation.