Design Pastebin
Last Updated: December 28, 2025
What is Pastebin?
Pastebin is a web service that allows users to store and share plain text or code snippets over the internet through unique URLs.
The core idea is simple: a user pastes text content, the system generates a unique key, and anyone with that key can retrieve the original content.
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It serves as a quick way to share logs, code snippets, configuration files, or any text-based content without needing file attachments or direct messaging.
Popular Examples: pastebin.com, GitHub Gist, Hastebin
What makes Pastebin interesting from a system design perspective is the asymmetry between writes and reads. Most users create a few pastes but share them with many people.
A single viral paste might be viewed millions of times. This read-heavy pattern, combined with content that ranges from a few bytes to several megabytes, creates interesting design challenges.
This system design problem touches on several fundamental concepts: unique ID generation, storage optimization, caching strategies, and handling content expiration.
In this chapter, we will walk through the high-level design of a Pastebin service.
Let’s begin by clarifying the requirements.