[System Design Tech Case Study Pulse #75]Massive 20 Billion Messages Daily : How Facebook Messenger Actually Scales

With detailed explanation and flow chart....

Oct 13, 2025

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Hi All,

Facebook Messenger's choice of Apache HBase as its backend storage system enables it to handle an astounding 20 billion messages daily. This feat allows Facebook to provide real-time messaging services to billions of users worldwide with high reliability and low latency.

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Today in this post, let me dive deep into how Facebook engineered this system, exploring the key architectural decisions, scaling strategies, and optimizations that enable HBase to manage this massive volume of messages for Messenger.

System Overview

Before I delve into the HBase architecture for Facebook Messenger, let's look at some key metrics that highlight the scale of its operations:

- Messages processed daily: 20 billion+
- Active users: 1.3 billion+
- Peak messages per second: Millions
- Data stored: Petabytes
- Latency: Low milliseconds for message delivery
- Availability: 99.99%+
- Global deployment: Multiple data centers worldwide
- Supported message types: Text, images, videos, voice messages, etc.
- Devices supported: Mobile apps, web browsers, IoT devices