Food delivery apps like Swiggy look deceptively simple on the surface—search, order, track, eat 😄
But behind the scenes, they operate one of the most complex real-time distributed systems in production today.
In this blog, we’ll break down Swiggy’s system design step by step—from requirements to APIs and high-level architecture—based on this excellent walkthrough:
System Design Video (Reference)
👉 https://youtu.be/xQnY-DDhEBw
Problem Statement
Design a food delivery platform similar to Swiggy / Zomato / Uber Eats that allows users to:
- Discover nearby restaurants
- Place orders
- Make payments
- Track delivery partners in real time
- Receive notifications at every stage
The system must scale to millions of users and restaurants while remaining fast and reliable.
Step 1: Functional Requirements
User Side
- User registration & authentication
- Profile management and order history
- Location-based restaurant discovery
- Search restaurants by name and menu
- View dynamic menus (price, availability, images)
- Add multiple items to cart
- Secure payments
- Real-time order tracking
- Notifications for every order state
Restaurant Side
- Accept or reject orders
- Update menu availability
- Manage incoming orders
Delivery Partner Side
- Driver discovery & assignment
- Location updates
- Optimized delivery routing
- ETA calculation
Step 2: Non-Functional Requirements
| Requirement | Expectation |
|---|---|
| Scale | ~50M users, ~1M restaurants |
| Availability | Search & discovery must always work |
| Consistency | Payments & inventory must be accurate |
| Latency | Low latency for search & tracking |
| Reliability | Fault-tolerant order flow |
Step 3: API Design (High Level)
Authentication & User
POST /api/v1/auth/register
POST /api/v1/auth/login
GET /api/v1/users/me
POST /api/v1/users/location
Restaurants & Search
GET /api/v1/restaurants/nearby
GET /api/v1/restaurants/{restaurantId}
GET /api/v1/restaurants/search
GET /api/v1/restaurants/{restaurantId}/menu
GET /api/v1/menu/search
Cart & Orders
POST /api/v1/cart/items
DELETE /api/v1/cart/items/{itemId}
POST /api/v1/orders
GET /api/v1/orders/{orderId}/tracking
Delivery & Tracking
POST /api/v1/delivery/assign
PATCH /api/v1/delivery/orders/{orderId}/accept
POST /api/v1/delivery/location
Notifications
POST /api/v1/notifications/send
GET /api/v1/notifications
Step 4: High-Level Design (HLD)
Entry Layer
- Load Balancer
-
API Gateway
- Authentication & Authorization
- Rate limiting
- Request routing
- Load balancing (Round Robin)
Microservices Architecture
| Service | Responsibility | Database |
|---|---|---|
| User Service | Auth, profile, location | User DB |
| Search Service | Nearby restaurants, filtering | Restaurant DB |
| Cart Service | Cart operations | Cart DB |
| Order Service | Order lifecycle | Order DB |
| Payment Service | Payment processing | External PG |
| Delivery Matching Service | Driver assignment | Driver DB |
| Location Service | Real-time driver tracking | Geo Store |
| Notification Service | Push & in-app alerts | Event Store |
Real-Time Delivery Tracking (Key Insight)
- Drivers continuously send GPS updates
- Location Service processes updates
- Users poll or subscribe via WebSockets
- ETA recalculated dynamically
- Notifications triggered on status changes
This is where event-driven architecture and async messaging (Kafka / SQS / PubSub) shine.
Design Trade-offs
- Search = High Availability 提醒 even stale data is acceptable
- Payments = Strong Consistency No double charges, no missing orders
- Tracking = Eventual Consistency Minor delays are acceptable
Final Thoughts
Designing Swiggy isn’t about cramming features—it’s about:
- Scalability
- Fault isolation
- Latency optimization
- Correctness where it matters
If you’re preparing for system design interviews or building large-scale distributed systems, this architecture is a goldmine.
Don’t forget to check out the original video:
👉 https://youtu.be/xQnY-DDhEBw
Top comments (1)
Wow, this is awesome!! Really cool breakdown of how Swiggy scales to millions. Makes all the moving parts like users, restaurants, and delivery partners super clear. Love seeing the APIs and high-level design laid out like this!!