Design Netflix
Last Updated: December 29, 2025
Netflix is a video streaming platform that allows users to watch movies, TV shows, and documentaries on demand. Users can browse a vast content library, stream videos in real-time, and receive personalized recommendations based on their viewing history.
The platform handles millions of concurrent users streaming video content simultaneously, making it one of the most demanding distributed systems in production today. Netflix must deliver high-quality video with minimal buffering while adapting to varying network conditions and device capabilities.
Popular Examples: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max
What makes Netflix particularly interesting from a system design perspective is the combination of challenges it must solve simultaneously. Unlike a text-based service where a request returns kilobytes of data, a single Netflix stream delivers gigabytes of video content over hours.
The system must handle massive bandwidth requirements, adapt video quality in real-time based on network conditions, protect premium content with digital rights management, and somehow make the experience feel instantaneous to the user.
This problem touches on many fundamental concepts: video encoding and adaptive bitrate streaming, content delivery networks, recommendation systems, and handling massive scale.
In this chapter, we will explore the high-level design of Netflix.
Lets start by clarifying the requirements: