Borrowed Strings: API Designs That Cut 94% of Allocations

📰 Dev.to · speed engineer

Learn how a simple API design change can significantly reduce allocations and improve latency by 6ms

intermediate Published 25 Apr 2026
Action Steps
  1. Analyze API designs to identify potential bottlenecks
  2. Use &str instead of String to reduce allocations
  3. Test and measure the impact of the change on latency
  4. Configure API endpoints to utilize the optimized design
  5. Apply the optimization to high-traffic areas of the application
  6. Compare results to ensure the change has a positive impact on performance
Who Needs to Know This

Software engineers and developers can benefit from this knowledge to optimize their API designs and improve application performance

Key Insight

💡 Using &str instead of String can significantly reduce allocations and improve performance

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💡 Reduce allocations by 94% and improve latency by 6ms with a simple API design change!

Key Takeaways

Learn how a simple API design change can significantly reduce allocations and improve latency by 6ms

Full Article

The 6ms latency improvement from one character change — how &str over String transformed our hot...
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